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June 02, 2022

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CTG is one of a handfull of current theories developed to help explain astrophysical findings, such as gravitational lensing, where the same astronomical bodies can be seen in duplicate, and other anomalous observations of light deflection around very large bodies in space.

These theories are attempts to model with mathematical precision observed results post facto. And they all center on postulating what exactly, mathematically, can explain these observations that cannot be explained by Newtonian, classic Relativity and Quantum physics.

Isn't it strange that science continues to prove human theory is limited in its accuracy and reality is actually much more layered, mysterious and in many cases, invisible?

As with the above, the newer refinements in theory are efforts to explain newer astronomical findings.

The short course is that the invisible and undetectable gravitational connections between immense objects in space, separated by hundreds of millions of miles, that holds these objects in their orbits, is unknown. But we conjecture their existence on the basis of a few measurable effects on light and matter.

Somehow the measurements of empty space, time, matter and light are connected. The data proves it. But whatever is connecting all these things is invisible to detection. And the actual mechanisms causing these connections unknown.

The very forces that pace time, connect all matter and pull on entire galexies through inconceivable distances of empty space is unknown. But the systematic influence on all these is measurable and consistent.

That scientists attempt to take limited but astounding observations they consistently detect and, rather than ignore or dismiss them, find some explanation, even though that explanation requires a mountain of mathematics and the imaginary conjectures of several things, including new forces and particles, and new relationships between these, is admirable.

They went there. They could have chosen not to. They could have claimed nothing is there and never even chose to invest in measurement. They could have said there is no proof of any of these explanations for the odd things we observed and on that basis never chosen to look and investigate. Other than that they invented a few competing explanations with imaginary stuff they dreamed up to fit the data. Welcome to Astrophysics.

But rather than say one imaginary explanation is as good as another, and therefore it's all imaginary, and entirely fabricated, they said "there is an explanation. A real one. And we are going to find it."

They could have said, we are inventing anything and everything post facto to explain the data we now have. And whenever new results come in we invent new explanations. Or that mathematically we've been able to invent a more but not entirely consistent explanation.

But it is the fact of the existence of these anomalous observations, accepted only because of the immense investment in measurement apparatus that gathered up this otherwise unknown information, that has become the basis of so much effort, thought, progress, and in time what further science has shown requires further refinement. And further invention.

Observations are never dismissed out of hand by scientists, especially when they are replicated. The hard scientific data we do have is the result of hard work based on a single belief that there is a real dynamic under the initial anecdotal findings. A real dynamic in what is entirely invisible.

Explanations abound, but none are accepted as truth nor dismissed without investigation, discovery, analysis and hypothesis testing. Certainly no one of a scientific mind settles for dismissing any evidence.

Why should that rigor apply only to the anomalous behavior of the stars and not the epic events we dismiss or ignore all the time within ourselves? Or worse still, each other?

Thanks for this review. Made for very interesting reading.

At a cursory level, and minus the math of course, I was aware of all of this. Except for the last, this hypothesis that gravitons might "generate" spacetime. That seems to be the exact obverse of what SR and GR postulate, which is that gravity (which Newtonian mechanics incorrectly, or at least limited-ly, views as a force) is a property of space-time (those pics we were taught in elementary physics courses, about a piece of paper or a bedsheet bent in, crimpled in, all that). My understanding was that QM does not see gravity as SR/GR do, but instead as caused by quanta called gravitons that exist within spacetime, much like light and photons. Here we have the apparently radical innovation that gravitons somehow generate spacetime.

Not sure what the implications of such might be, I know too little of either QM or SR/GR to comment meaningfully on that myself. But I would imagine that this, if true, might have direct consequences on the fundamental math of SR/GR. Which leads me to ask: Any idea if this hypothesis, that gravitons generate spacetime, is limited to the physical scale of QM, that is to say the tiny end of the spectrum (as is the case with much of QM), as opposed to the macro end that cosmology as well as relativity operate at?

(I realize that's a very fundamental question, easy to ask but very difficult to answer, unless one's actually into QM. So it's fine if you don't know. I've bookmarked a google search page on "covariant quantum fields" that I intend to follow up a bit on at leisure later on. [ Well, hopefully, because, after all, intentions, intentions! My huge bookmark list is testimony to my generally lofty intentions, and the number of those bookmarks that stay unexplored testifies to how weak is (my) flesh! :--) ] Just, if it's actually mentioned somewhere later on in that book, and if you happen to come across it while reading, and without going to any additional trouble over this: then perhaps you could clear that up.)

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