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Comment by EliRivers | Hacker News Reader

That doesn't sound like new-age mysticism to me.

It sure does. That's classic new-age mysticism. They love hand-wavy energy modes and vibrations. If it had the word "quantum" in it, it'd be ticking all the boxes. Maybe it's an unfortunate case of a non-native English speaker not realising that these terms are commonly hijacked by bullshit artists.

To suggest that some stars are invisible because they emit EM radiation that simply can't interact with anything on this earth is an incredible statement that requires a lot more than just "I can imagine".

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Indeed: stars don't emit radiation per se, the trillions of atoms absorbing and emitting quantised photons do.

So,

a) they would have to be made of something other than the normal atomic matter normal stars, planets, and rocks, and people are made of

b) be normal Hydrogen, Helium, etc. but with completely different quantum mechanical behaviour. Just sitting their in isolated regions of space - right next to normal matter.

Grade-A bollocks.

I think the idea rests on the notion that the stars all obey the same physical laws and are made of the same types of atoms, but that the timing of the motion of atoms in distant stars is not synchronized with our own. I like to think of the physics of synchrotron light in this context. When a particle accelerates, as in an atomic clock, it emits light.

> think the idea rests on the notion that the stars all obey the same physical laws and are made of the same types of atoms, but that the timing of the motion of atoms in distant stars is not synchronized with our own.

yes, we get that. The idea that this somehow causes "you won't see it" ... well it's an idea.

An idea found in new-age mysticism.

It's not science of any kind.

In the scientific community, we talk about how different foundational principles or axioms change the heuristics of physics and that is what this article was about. Convention A leads to Riemannian coordinates and the big bang. Convention B leads to Cartesian coordinates and tired light. There is nothing mystical about Cartesian logic. It was reborn during the enlightenment. When people try to think in Cartesian ways about Riemannian theories, as most people tend to do, trouble arises.

Could you please stop dodgeing, waffling, obfuscating and going on about "that's just one way of looking at it" and address the part where it causes "you won't see it" for stars etc?

This part is where the jargon serves only to hide the fact that this is nonsense.

He is askng for an explanation in terms of quantum mechanics and I gave one, but I prefer the first explanation I gave in term of the speed of light. What is nice about tired light or steady-state universes is that the two explanations are consistent. The big-bang universe is full of inconsistencies and paradoxes which are somehow not paradoxical if you do the math and don't think too hard about the heuristics. In short, it is a mess that can only be sorted out if you think outside of the box which defines it.

I think of supermassive black holes, SMBH, as the ultimate progression in the variety of ways matter convects together into denser and denser objects. So if we want to call a black hole or an SMBH a star, I am fine with that. And, since I think Planck plasma can emerge from the most dense matter-energy which is generally found inside the event horizon, we then need to talk about what Planck particles are. I model them as dipoles containing two charged particles - an electrino and a positrino, which can be combined in various ways to form all of the standard matter particles. So now, if a Planck level energy particle is one of these dipoles, well that is not a particle in the standard model. It may be the equivalent of a Gen III photon, but we don't have generations for photons yet. And the vibrational or oscillation frequency of a Planck particle is the Planck frequency, which we definitely can not detect. So all that said, the description of a "vibrating star" is ok with me.

but that the timing of the motion of atoms in distant stars is not synchronized with our own

What is this "synchronised timing" of which you speak? Atoms in distant stars move in some way that is fundamentally different to movement of atoms in nearby stars, but that movement isn't different in space, but in time? This makes no sense.

On the face of it "synchronised in time" means "contemporary". If the argument is that I can only experience the present, and that I can't interact with the past or the future (although light emitted in the past that reaches me in the present is of course on the table), that seems true but not really very relevant.

> What is this "synchronised timing" of which you speak?

I think this text should help you understand:

https://www.amazon.com/Spiritual-Vibrations-H-P-Blavatsky/dp...

H. P. Blavatsky, 1926

Prior to her post-doctoral work, she wrote her thesis on the synchronization of particle beams with light, but it didn't have anything to do with mysticism. This contains a sample of some of that work: https://kirstenhacker.wordpress.com/posts-deleted-by-quora/

The atoms in the distant stars are the same as the atoms here, but they are being shaken around relative to where we are - that is an explanation in terms of space. It relies on the motion of the atoms in the distant star being faster than the speed of light relative to us.

The atoms in the distant stars are the same as the atoms here, but they are emitting light at a different time relative to where we are - that is an explanation in terms of time. It relies on destructive interference between the light we emit and the light the distant star emits.

The two explanations are geometrically equivalent.

They are consistent with the worldview of people like Maxwell, Bjerknes and Hertz. They looked up at the sky and saw stars in jiggling jello. It isn't a bad heuristic. It just went out of fashion.

You cannot just have an idea. You need to pitch up with either

a) statisical data to show evidence of said idea

b) a mechanism by which said phenomenon could occur.

Like genetics. We knew the 'idea' had merit from Mendel's experiments and Darwin's observations. Watson, Crick, and Franklin showed us how.

Yet, in this hypothesis, the evidence for the invisibility of some stars is how invisible they are?

The choice between the big-bang and tired-light is a choice between self-consistent theories which each explain the available data - the absence of distant stars in this case. Some say that the choice should be made based on politics, marketing, the amount of work already invested in the theory, etc. She made a case for tired-light based on heuristic and semantic grounds. She thinks that it is more consistent with existing word use and with other sub-specialties within physics. She believes it would reduce the fragmentation of physics as a discipline. Then again, perhaps this fragmentation was deliberate. It is like that Tool song, Schism, "I know the pieces fit. I watched them fall away." The question I'd like answered is: "Will the next generation be able to put the pieces back together?

The choice between the big-bang and tired-light is a choice between self-consistent theories which each explain the available data

... but tired-light then goes on to fail at explaining other data, and experimental tests.

By all means, come up with new hypotheses to explain existing phenomena. When those new hypotheses subsequently make predictions that disagree with experiment and new observations, the choices are to acknowledge this or to do what you appear to be doing. Please stop.

People who've been conditioned to imagine a big bang bubble that expanded at greater than the speed of light and then popped often find it difficult for to imagine Fred Hoyle's steady-state universe (which is what she is trying to describe). For people with a materials science background, it is easy to imagine, but for people steeped in modern pop-sci mythology, it is difficult.

Tell me more about the "popped" phase of the big bang?

Those who believe in the big bang say that there was an inflationary epoch during which particles traveled faster than light - just like the Standard Model virtual particles within collider experiments which temporarily violate conservation of energy. Then, all of a sudden, for no discernible reason, we are supposed to believe that the laws of physics suddenly changed and everything that happened since must travel at less than the speed of light. Wild story. I saw Andre Linde tell it in a SLAC conference room when I was just a child. I've since been amazed by how much sand castle empire building resulted from this lark. Some of those who founded the theory have since abandoned it. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/physicist-s... The man who stood by it won the 2019 Nobel Prize (James Peebles). Loyalty to the group pays off.

The steady state universe, or perhaps a slowly changing universe, is where I am placing my bet. I think scientists have really dropped the ball on supermassive black hole science. It seems logical that instead of a singularity, the core would reach Planck scale and that core could breach at the poles under sufficient conditions, thus generating those massive high energy jets. Isotropy in the universe would be explained by the same physics process governing all SMBH. Then there is no need for a big bang origin.

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