Tuesday, September 11, 2012

ON CONSCIOUSNESS


It is interesting to note that a group of neuroscientists convening at Cambridge University signed a document on 07-07-2012, officially declaring that non-human animals, “including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses” are conscious. It is not a path breaking discovery, but telling the obvious. We wonder why they left out plants. They also function similarly and respond to touch (hand or sun-light or musical sound). True, because of their rigid cell structure, they do not have locomotion, but in all other aspects they are as conscious as human beings.

The basic division between plants, all other living beings except humans, and humans is in the flow pattern of food and energy in their systems. The flow in plants is directed “upwards” – from root to tip. In the animals etc, it is sideways. Only in humans, it is top-down. Human beings are the only living beings that can copulate in their normal posture facing each other. All others have to bend.

Before asserting that: “Consciousness, indeed, has to exist in a rudimentary form in all particles of matter. To put it another way, particles of matter must be a form of consciousness”, one must precisely and scientifically define what is consciousness. In that case, it will be noticed that the material particles by themselves are inert, plants and other animals exhibit a mixed character and only human beings are conscious. Because only human beings can plan for the future, whereas others respond to situations based on their memory. Memory is not the same as consciousness, because it is about remembering the result of past observation of objects when they come in contact with other similar objects – hence object centric, whereas consciousness is about not only observation of objects, but about the mechanism of observation also even in the absence of objects - hence observation centric. Hence only humans can plan their actions meticulously.

There are two more differences. The plants have only one sense organ – touch. The birds, etc that are born out of eggs are deficient in one of the sense organs. The others except human beings have five sensory organs, but they are not balanced – some function exceedingly well, whereas others are deficient. Only in humans, they are balanced.

Voluntary motion differentiates conscious from the inert. Hence the agency of motion classifies the evolutionary state of a living being. The virus and bacteria have numerous projections on their body that act like “legs”. Hence they are at the bottom of the evolutionary cycle. Gradually the centipede, the sixteen legged, the ten, eight, six, four legged evolve. Finally the human beings with two legs evolve. This puts them at the top of the evolutionary table. Monkeys, who generally are four legged, can walk in two legs and use their fore legs as hands. Hence, they came immediately before humans. It is not correct that humans evolved from monkeys, as by this time there would have been no monkeys. In any case, we refuse to accept that our fore fathers were monkeys.

In a recent experiment concerning a man missing huge portions of his cerebral cortex, it was thought that he would lose at least some of his self-awareness. Patient R, also known as Roger, defies that expectation. Roger is a 57-year-old man who suffered extensive brain damage in 1980 after a severe bout of herpes simplex encephalitis—inflammation of the brain caused by the herpes virus. The disease destroyed most of Roger’s insular cortex, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), all brain regions thought to be essential for self-awareness. About 10 percent of his insula remains and only one percent of his ACC. Roger cannot remember much of what happened to him between 1970 and 1980 and he has great difficulty forming new memories. He cannot taste or smell either. But he still knows who he is—he has a sense of self. He recognizes himself in the mirror and in photographs. To most people, Roger seems like a relatively typical man who does not act out of the ordinary.

Regarding the above experiments, it should be noted that the first is a mental function that acts mechanically. Like the matter particles have inertia, thought is the inertia of mind, as it is generated after the perception of some object that starts the memory of similar perceptions. Like ineria is destroyed due to contact with air, or any other obstruction, thought is destroyed due to pain, knowledge about the object or finding the object. Hence it is an inertia.

Since inertia including thought are mechanical functions, memory is also a mechanical function. However, consciousness is the "I" content in any perception. In all perceptions, it appears in similar ways, indicating its difference from conscious functions.

In the experiment, the person with brain damage could not remember past events because the inertia of thought that was based on stored information was damaged due to hardware malfunction. But consciousness or self-awareness is not hardware malfunction. Hence, both are not related.

Thursday, September 06, 2012

A DIFFERENT CONCEPT OF GRAVITY


Gravity is not like magnetism that attracts one mass towards another mass under specific conditions. It is because gravity is not directly related to mass, but to moving mass – to momentum, which is a product of velocity and mass. Thus, the relationship between gravity and mass is not straight forward. The velocity factor of the bodies arises due to energy but often this factor is either overlooked or misinterpreted. After all, the equations, by themselves, are meaningless signs. They have to be interpreted. The gravitational force on the left hand side of the equation is not the only force. It is an additional force that only changes the existing force balance. The curvature of spacetime can change to appear as gravity only when there is change in its local density, which is possible only due to the appearance of an additional force (energy or mass) in the local field. This changes the velocity components of bodies and links gravity to momentum and adjusts the distance (due to changing density).

When the relative velocity between the two bodies is zero, i.e., when the bodies are at rest with reference to each other, assuming no other force is present, the spacetime curvature of the local medium should also be non-changing. Thus, gravity should either be not evident or adjust itself to the distance between the bodies (masses being constant). From the movements of planets around stars in more or less fixed orbits, we know that gravity is present and that it provides the angular momentum. From the measurements of acceleration due to gravity of the same body from different heights, we know that gravity adjusts itself to the distance (though other factors are present, this factor cannot be ignored). There is no reason to believe that it does not happen in space. The planetary orbits wobble because within the closed solar system, distribution of mass is constantly changing due to the differential movement of the planets (like different height in the case of acceleration due to gravity). Yet, over long periods, the wobbling irons itself out. This leads to the following inferences:

1.     Gravity is not an attractive force like the electromagnetic interaction (that redistributes charge symmetrically which appears as attractive or correspondingly repulsive forces), but is a balancing or stabilizing force like a chemical reaction (that redistributes the components violating local symmetry).
2.     The net effect of gravity adjusts itself to changes in the local field density. This appears as the gravitational constant.
3.     The value of G cannot be universally constant, but must change according to the mean local density of the medium. For empirical reasons to be discussed later, it should have 7 values for structure formation and 11 sets of values for displacement.
4.     The gravitational interaction between two bodies is related to angular momentum of the smaller body and the spin of the bigger body. This is the reason why the mathematics of both spin and angular momentum are identical - you compare left with right or right with left, the result is same.
5.     Maxwell’s equations are background invariant. Transverse waves are always characterized by particle motion being perpendicular to the wave motion. This implies the existence of a medium through which the reference wave travels and with respect to which the transverse wave travels in a perpendicular direction. In the absence of the reference wave, which is a longitudinal wave, the transverse wave can not be characterized as such. Transverse waves are background invariant by its very definition. Since light is a transverse wave, it is background invariant. The so-called non-interacting dark energy is the background structure. Mr. Einstein’s ether-less relativity is not supported by Maxwell’s Equations nor the Lorentz Transformations, both of which are medium (aether) based. Thus, the non-observance of aether drag (as observed in Michelson-Morley experiments) cannot serve to ultimately disprove the aether model.
6.     The universe is not expanding or accelerating, as it is not evident at local galactic scales or less. Had the universe being expanding, such expansion would have been evident in local scales also. Even a spot on the balloon expands. Distant galaxies are rotating around a common galactic center and like the velocities of planets far away from the Sun, their velocities are relatively greater. We can visualize it as a potter’s wheel. Compared to a point relatively nearer to the galactic center, the distant objects appear to be moving faster. Since it is a circular orbit, at times they appear as receding (atichaara) while at other times they will appear as approaching (vakra). The measured time span is insignificant in cosmic scales.

All displacements are associated with generation of heat energy. But all interactions are not associated with high energy. The strong, weak, electromagnetic interaction and radioactive disintegration are associated with high energy. Gravitational interaction is associated with low energy. Hence they belong to two different classes.

Interaction involves two bodies. They are brought together by a force that may place them in proximity with each other or regulate their distance. We explain the strong force by a mechanism called “chiti”, which literally means consolidation. The proximity-proximity variables give rise to the so-called strong interaction that bring the centre of mass and the boundary towards each other confining them (we call such interactions. While discussing Coulomb’s law, we will show that contrary to popular belief, charge interaction in all emission fields takes place in four different ways. Two positively charged particles interact by exploding. But it is not so for interaction between two negatively charged particles. Otherwise there would be no electricity. The strong force holds the positively charged particles together. Their interaction process generates spin. We will discuss this mechanism while describing spin. Proximity-distance variables generate weak interaction where only the boundary shifts. This process also gives rise to angular momentum. Both strong forces and weak forces consolidate two particles. While the strong force consolidates it fully, the weak force consolidates both partially.

Distance-proximity variables generate electromagnetic interaction where the bound field interacts with the centre of mass of other particles. The modern view that messenger photons mediate electromagnetic interaction is erroneous, as the photon field cannot create electricity or magnetism without the presence of an ion field. The photons must drive electrons or positive ions in order to create the forces of electricity and magnetism. Normally, the mass-less photons cannot create macro-fields on their own. Further, since photon is said to be its own anti-particle, how does the same particle cause both attraction and repulsion? Earlier we had pointed out at the back-ground structure and its relationship with universal constants. When minimal energy moves through the universal back-ground structure, it generates light. This transfer of momentum is known as the photon. Since the density of the universal back-ground structure is minimum; the velocity of light is the maximum.

Distance-distance variables generate radioactive disintegration that leads to a part of the mass from the nucleus to be ejected in beta decay to be coupled with a negatively charged particle. We will explain the mechanism separately.

Gravity between two bodies balances or stabilizes their orbits based on the mass-energy distribution over an area at the maximum possible distance. It is mediated by the field that balances or stabilizes the bodies in proportion to their dimensional density over the area. Thus, it belongs to a different class where the bodies interact indirectly through the field. When it stabilizes proximally, it is called acceleration due to gravity. When it stabilizes at a distance, it is known as gravitation. Like the constant for acceleration due to gravity g varies from place to place, the G also varies from system to system, though it is not locally apparent. This shows that not only the four fundamental forces of Nature, but also gravitation is essential for structure formation, as without it, even the different parts of the body will not exist in a stable configuration.

Einsteinian space-time curvature calculations were based on vacuum, i.e. on a medium without any gravitational properties (since it has no mass). Now if a material medium is considered (which space certainly is), then it will have a profound effect on the space-time geometry as opposed to that in vacuum. It will make the gravitational constant differential for different localities.

Since space is not empty, it must have different densities at different points. The density is a function of mass and change of density is a function of energy. Thus, the equation: e = mc2 does not show mass energy equivalence, but the density gradient of space. The square of velocity has no physical meaning except when used to measure an area of length and breadth equal to the distance measured by c. The above equation does not prove mass energy convertibility, but only  shows the energy requirement to spread a designated quantity of mass over a designated area, so that the mean density can be called a particular type of sub- field or jaala – as we call it.