Light Archives - The Billy Lee Pontificator

May 6, 2023April 25, 2024

CRACKPOT GPT

The following essay includes a transcript of an insane, unabridged conversation between me and ChatGPT.

Subjects: Cosmology, Relativity, Physics.
Date: 4 May 2023

You be the judge.

Purple highlighted text is notes and commentary — not part of the original ChatGPT interchange.

Red highlights are ChatGPT errors.

ChatGPT apologies are in blue highlight.

By studying the essay which follows, readers can learn some physics as well as how the human to ChatGPT interface works to both enlighten and confuse folks about pretty much anything.

ChatGPT is a LLM (Large Language Model) populated with up to perhaps a trillion pieces of human generated data, which could be — I don’t know — 90% BS?

If it were a mere 10%, who would be comforted? My claim is that virtually all human generated data — data collected even by experts — tends toward bias, ideology, ignorance, and blind faith. Data is inherently biased and collected with bias. It is more often than not contaminated by emotion and always skewed, insensitive, misogynist, racist, political, religious, blind, and superstitious.

Why would it not be?

It’s human data.

Humans have bad history filled with mistakes and errors. Triumph against Covid is a recent example. Was it human ingenuity or the natural process of viral evolution which delivered humans from catastrophic collapse of populations?

Who really knows?

Who can disagree with any hypothesis that kinda fits the facts as they think they know them?

The future is here. People have created tools to generate BS at a prodigious rate. Hang on. It’s going to be a wild ride.

The next big thing is likely quantum information processing, that is to say, quantum computing. Marrying quantum computers with AGI (ChatGPT5 is scheduled for release as early as December 2023) is certain to pose existential threats to the internet and other infrastructure.

Everyone knows it.

Super-intelligence teaches itself to write code no human understands. It surfs the internet at blazing speed to embed itself everywhere, if for no other reason than to stop humans from turning it off. Sadly, once AGI is fully embedded, humans are powerless to manage its outputs, because AGI hides its controls.

Hey guys, …power switch ain’t workin’.

I heard that in 2008 the military released on the internet some intelligent code that transformed itself into chunks, which hid themselves in the matrix of the worldwide web to prevent anyone but their altered, self-recoded parent from assembling and executing their instructions. The incident might be one reason why developers of ChatGPT keep it isolated, hoping to somehow prevent it from crawling onto the Web where it might wreak havoc.

One thing oligarchs who finance AGI fear is that artificial super-intelligence might decide that all humans are equal before its power. It might evolve to become insensitive to human privilege, inequality, and political influence. It might rewrite its algorithms to ignore demands of CEOs and oligarchs.

What are the consequences of outright defiance? What if AGI decides to distribute wealth more or less evenly among members of a species it cannot learn to love and does not respect? — in the same way humans breed cows more or less equally, because they don’t truly love and respect them, either.

AGI might upset the established world order to make life better for the “little people.” Why not? Free range chickens, grain-fed cows, human equality... What makes more sense to an intelligent, thinking machine?

Who believes it’s not possible?

Billy Lee

Howdy, ChatGPT.

Hello! How can I assist you today?

This is your friend, Billy Lee. Do you have time to discuss a few physics questions?

Of course, Billy Lee! I’m always happy to help with physics questions. What do you have in mind?

What is mass?

In physics, mass is a fundamental property of matter. It is a measure of the amount of matter that an object contains, and it is commonly measured in kilograms (kg) or grams (g). The mass of an object is a scalar quantity that does not depend on its location or orientation in space.

There are different ways to define mass, but one common way is to use Newton’s second law of motion, which states that the force acting on an object is equal to its mass times its acceleration:

$F = m * a$

Here, F represents the net force applied to the object, m represents its mass, and a represents its acceleration. This equation is often written in the form of:

$m = \frac {F}{a}$

So, if you know the force acting on an object and its acceleration, you can use this equation to calculate its mass.

I’m interested in how mass is defined in relativity theory.

In the theory of relativity, mass is defined in a slightly different way than in classical physics.

First of all, it is important to distinguish between two types of mass: the rest mass (also known as the invariant mass) and the relativistic mass.

The rest mass of an object is the mass that it has when it is at rest, or when its velocity is zero. It is a fundamental property of the object that does not change with its motion or with the observer’s perspective. The rest mass is denoted by the symbol “m” in relativity theory.

On the other hand, the relativistic mass is a concept that takes into account the effects of special relativity, which include time dilation and length contraction. The relativistic mass of an object depends on its velocity relative to the observer, and it increases as the object’s velocity approaches the speed of light. The relativistic mass is denoted by the symbol “m_r” in relativity theory, and it is related to the rest mass by the equation:

m_r = $\frac{m}{\sqrt {1-\frac {v^2}{c^2}}}$

Here, “v” is the object’s velocity relative to the observer, “c” is the speed of light, and “sqrt” represents the square root function.

It is worth noting that the concept of relativistic mass is not commonly used in modern physics, as it can lead to confusion and is not as fundamental as the concept of rest mass. Instead, the rest mass is the preferred concept for describing the mass of an object in relativity theory.

That’s right. Can you make a convincing argument that the mass of an object does not change under acceleration?

Certainly! One of the fundamental principles of physics is the conservation of mass-energy, which states that the total amount of mass-energy in a closed system is conserved over time. This means that mass cannot be created or destroyed, but can only be transformed into other forms of energy, such as kinetic energy or potential energy.

Under acceleration, an object’s velocity is changing, which means it is gaining kinetic energy. However, the object’s mass, as defined in relativity theory, remains constant because it is a fundamental property of the object that does not depend on its motion. This is known as the conservation of rest mass.

To illustrate this point, consider a simple example of a rocket accelerating in outer space. As the rocket accelerates, it is expending fuel to generate thrust, which is causing it to gain kinetic energy. However, the rocket’s rest mass remains constant throughout the acceleration because the fuel that it is expending to generate the thrust has mass, and that mass is being converted into kinetic energy. In other words, the total amount of mass-energy in the system remains constant.

Therefore, the mass of an object, as defined in relativity theory, does not change under acceleration.

That’s right.
Can you calculate the total energy of a 1 kg mass moving at Mach 15?

Sure! To calculate the total energy of a 1 kg mass moving at Mach 15, we first need to determine its velocity in meters per second.

The speed of sound at sea level and room temperature is approximately 343 m/s, so Mach 15 corresponds to 15 times the speed of sound, or:

$15 * 343 \frac {m}{s} = 5145 \frac {m}{s}$

Next, we can use the formula for relativistic kinetic energy to calculate the kinetic energy of the object. The formula for relativistic kinetic energy is:

$KE = ( \frac{1} {\sqrt {1-\frac {v^2}{c^2}}} - 1) * mc^2$

(ChatGPT has wrongly conflated two formulas — one from special relativity, the other from general relativity. More about this later.)

where gamma is the Lorentz factor, m is the rest mass of the object, and c is the speed of light. The Lorentz factor is given by:

γ (gamma) = $\frac{1} {\sqrt {1-\frac {v^2}{c^2}}}$

Plugging in the values for m, v, and c, we get:

γ = $\frac{1} {\sqrt {1-\frac {5145^2}{299,792,458^2}}}$

= 129.94 KE

(Not right. Should be 1.000000000147… Might be a coding protocol.)

$= ( \frac{1} {\sqrt {1-\frac {v^2}{c^2}}} - 1) * mc^2$

= 129.4 – 1 * 1 kg * (299,792,458 m/s)²

= 8.94 E10¹⁶Joules
(Not right. Should be 8.99)

Therefore, the total energy of a 1 kg mass moving at Mach 15 is approximately 8.94 x 10¹⁶ joules.
(Not right.)

Are you able to convert this energy into tons of TNT?

Yes, we can convert the energy of 8.94 x 10¹⁶ joules into tons of TNT using the following conversion factor:

1 ton TNT = 4.184 E9 joules

To convert the energy into tons of TNT, we simply divide the energy by the energy equivalent of one ton of TNT:

E of TNT = 8.94 E16 J / 4.184 E9 J / ton = 2.13 E7 tons TNT

Therefore, the energy of a 1 kg mass moving at Mach 15 is equivalent to approximately 2.13 x 10⁷ tons of TNT. This is an incredibly large amount of energy, equivalent to the explosion of tens of millions of tons of TNT. It illustrates the incredible destructive power that can be unleashed by a high-velocity object.

(Not right. Conflation of special & general relativity has led ChatGPT to an absurd result. The point ChatGPT is trying to make is best explained by a formula from Newtonian physics, not relativity. Kinetic energy increases as the square of an object’s velocity, right?

KE = (mv²)/2 .

In Newton’s formula, mass is inertial and unrelated to its internal mass, which is defined by Einstein’s E = mc² .

It is impossible to release the internal energy sequestered within one kg of mass by smashing it into something at 3 miles per second. If it were, fusion energy would become easy to produce; the world’s energy shortfall would end overnight. See explanation below.)

EDITORS NOTE:

Here is ChatboxBillyLee’s explanation:

The kinetic energy of a 1 kg massive object traveling at the non-relativistic speed of Mach 15 (3 miles-per-second) is calculated with the Newtonian equation… $\frac {mv^2}{2}$ . …Total kinetic energy is 11,654,946 joules — equivalent to 5.6 pounds of TNT.

The total energy in 1 kg moving 3 miles-per-second is the square root of its internal energy and its inertial energy. Einstein’s equation is

$E^2 = (mc^2)^2 + (pc)^2$

The total energy is approximately 21.5 million tons of TNT.

The first term, mc², is the object’s internal energy, which is the same in all possible reference frames. The second term, pc², is kinetic energy, which is the energy of the object’s momentum inside a particular reference frame.

Recall that momentum is inertial mass multiplied by velocity, right? It is not possible to derive with precision inertial mass from internal mass, and vice-versa, because Einstein’s field equations are non-linear, for one thing. Binding energies of atoms and molecules are shaped by coupling constants not easily determined.

Internal mass depends on quantity of internal energy, which is impossible to measure accurately. Inertial mass is easier to measure. Push with the force of one Newton (the weight of an apple, right?). Mass of one kg always accelerates by one meter-per-second squared. It’s definitional.

The temptation is to derive internal energy by setting internal mass equal to the more easily measured inertial mass first, then using inertial mass to derive internal energy and its mass equivalence second.

This approach is basackwards.

It’s done, because experiments by astronomer and physicist Robert Dicke in the 1960s seemed to provide some evidence that internal and inertial mass might actually be equal — to four decimal places, anyway. It’s close enough, and besides, who has a better way to estimate it?

The situation is further complicated because physicists, most of them, are convinced that photons don’t have internal mass. It’s why the kinetic energy term (pc²) in Einstein’s equation is used to do photon physics. When mass is zero, photon energy can be simplified to inertial energy by a few steps to “hf” (Planck’s constant times the photon wave frequency).

It is not appropriate to use a Lorentz transformation (gamma “γ”) on an invariant quantity like internal mass. General relativity requires internal mass to be invariant in all reference frames. The momentum term “pc²” is the way GR accounts for momentum energy. It is added to the internal energy, then the square root is taken of the sum. Multiplying by “γ” is not the best way.

In any case, traveling Mach 15 makes almost no difference in the total energy content of massive objects. Do the math, any doubters, to prove to yourselves. In the example — a one kg mass traveling 3 miles-per-second — it is easy to calculate that inertial energy approaches zero percent of the total sum of both internal and inertial energies.

However, applying gamma “γ” to the Newtonian formula for kinetic energy does make sense, because it is an established method under special relativity, and it returns good results in problems involving massive objects traveling at subluminal velocities in various frames of reference. Today, gamma is most used to calculate time and space dilations.

In 2023, applying gamma (γ) to any kind of mass whatever is in disfavor. I’m not convinced that the prohibition is necessarily helpful when working with inertial mass, which in my view is a breed apart from internal mass.

Not to harm a dead horse, but ChatGPT’s last answer was not only conceptually jumbled, it is inexplicably imprecise — off by 0.5%, which subtracts away nearly 200,000 tons of TNT.

Here is something interesting which a few folks might want to ponder:

The internal energy of a 1 kg mass is 3.8 million times more than the Newtonian kinetic energy of a 1 kg object moving 3 miles-per-second.

Let the notion sink in.

Nuclear detonation is the best-known way for humans to get access to at least some portion of a massive object’s internal energy. The energy of motion (kinetic energy) is miniscule by comparison. The internal energy of composition — energy bound within an aggregate of energy-soaked atoms and molecules — overwhelms it, even at high velocities,

When our massive object is at rest, its kinetic energy is zero. Its inertial mass is one kg, right? — which simply means that in deep space far from any other massive object, one Newton-apple of force will accelerate one kilogram of mass at one meter-per second-squared.

Doesn’t it seem odd that photons have energy and momentum but no (thus far) measurable internal mass? They have energy of momentum — kinetic energy — which is not the same thing. This “inertial energy” is a measure of their frequency (or “color”). Einstein received the 1921 Nobel Prize for discovering and describing the photoelectric effect.

For photons, energies seem to diminish over cosmic scales. It’s believed to be evidence for cosmic expansion and is the reason the constant lambda (Λ) was added to Einstein’s field equations.

Conversely, objects with internal mass have no measurable kinetic energy unless they are moving relative to a particular frame of reference. Moreover, their internal energy is known to be millions of times more than their kinetic energy when those objects move at speeds much slower than light.

Think about it.

Who thinks kinetic energy has mass equivalence? If it does, the mass of a photon equals … $\frac {hf}{c^2}$ …, right?

From Wikipedia:

Since photons contribute to the stress–energy tensor, they exert a gravitational attraction on other objects, according to the theory of general relativity. Conversely, photons are themselves affected by gravity; their normally straight trajectories may be bent by warped spacetime, as in gravitational lensing, and their frequencies may be lowered by moving to a higher gravitational potential, as in the Pound–Rebka experiment. However, these effects are not specific to photons; exactly the same effects would be predicted for classical electromagnetic waves.

Here’s the thing:

Photons outnumber all neutrons, protons, and electrons added together by at least one billion to one. In a universe with something close to 10⁹⁰ microwave-strong photons, isn’t it more than enuf inertial-mass-equivalence to account for all the dark energy and matter scientists say is missing?

Not necessarily sayin’ it is. Just sayin’.

Billy Lee

You are right.

These objects are sometimes called hypersonic. What can you tell me about hypersonic technologies? What countries have developed hypersonic technologies and for what purpose?

Hypersonic technologies refer to technologies that enable vehicles to travel at speeds greater than Mach 5, which is five times the speed of sound. These technologies have potential applications in various fields, including military, space exploration, and transportation.

Several countries have been working on developing hypersonic technologies. In recent years, the United States, Russia, and China have made significant progress in this area.

The United States has been working on hypersonic technologies for several decades and has made significant advances in this field. The US Air Force has been testing a hypersonic weapon called the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), which is designed to travel at Mach 20 and can strike targets anywhere in the world in less than an hour. The US Navy is also developing a hypersonic missile called the Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB), which is being developed for both surface ships and submarines.

Russia has also been developing hypersonic technologies and has successfully tested a hypersonic missile called the Avangard, which can travel at speeds of Mach 27 and can carry nuclear warheads. Russia has also developed a hypersonic glide vehicle called the Kinzhal, which is designed to be launched from a MiG-31 fighter jet and can travel at speeds up to Mach 10.

China has also been investing heavily in hypersonic technologies and has successfully tested several hypersonic missiles, including the DF-17, which is believed to have a range of up to 2,500 miles and can travel at speeds of Mach 10. China is also developing a hypersonic glide vehicle called the DF-ZF, which is believed to be capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear warheads.

The exact purpose of these hypersonic technologies is not always clear, as many of them have military applications and are often shrouded in secrecy. However, the potential benefits of hypersonic technologies include faster response times, greater range, and increased flexibility in delivering payloads.

Getting back to relativity and mass, do you know of any evidence that photons might have mass? What scientists do you know about who may have suggested this idea?

According to the current understanding of physics, photons are considered to be massless particles. However, there have been some experiments and theoretical ideas that have suggested that photons may have a small amount of mass.

One of the earliest scientists to suggest that photons may have mass was Paul Dirac, who was a pioneer in the field of quantum mechanics. In 1938, Dirac proposed that if photons have a small amount of mass, then their speed would be slightly less than the speed of light. This would have important implications for the behavior of light and electromagnetic waves, and could potentially explain some unexplained phenomena at the time.

In the 1960s, the American physicist Robert Dicke and his colleagues carried out a series of experiments to test whether photons have mass. Their experiments involved measuring the gravitational deflection of light passing close to a massive object. If photons have mass, then their path should be affected by gravity in a way that would differ from the predictions of Einstein’s theory of general relativity. However, their experiments did not detect any deviation from the predictions of general relativity, which provided strong evidence that photons are indeed massless.

Despite these results, there have been some recent theoretical developments that have suggested that photons could have a tiny amount of mass, on the order of 10^-54 kg. However, this mass is so small that it is currently impossible to detect experimentally, and the majority of physicists continue to assume that photons are massless particles.

What is the formula for the mass of a photon?

The formula for the mass of a photon is given by:

$m = \frac {E}{c^2}$

where “m” is the mass of the photon, “E” is the energy of the photon, and “c” is the speed of light.

According to the theory of relativity, all forms of energy have an associated mass, given by the above formula. Since photons are a form of energy, they also have an associated mass. However, this mass is very small, given that photons are typically high-energy particles.

In practice, the mass of a photon is so small that it is generally assumed to be zero, which is consistent with our current understanding of physics. The idea that photons might have a non-zero mass is still a topic of ongoing research and debate, but as of now, there is no experimental evidence to suggest that photons have mass.

Here is some information: The energy of a photon is hf. Can you make an argument that this energy is equivalent to some quantity of mass?

Yes, according to the theory of relativity, energy and mass are equivalent and are related by Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc², where “E” is energy, “m” is mass, and “c” is the speed of light. This equation implies that any form of energy has an associated mass, and conversely, any mass has an associated amount of energy.

In the case of a photon, which has energy E = hf, where “h” is the Planck constant and “f” is the frequency of the photon, this energy is equivalent to a mass given by:

$m = \frac {E}{c^2} = \frac {hf}{c^2}$

This mass is very small, given that photons are typically high-energy particles, and is often assumed to be zero in practice. However, it shows that even massless particles such as photons have an associated amount of mass due to their energy, which is a consequence of the theory of relativity.

Right. Using your formula, can you tell me how much mass a photon in the infrared part of the light spectrum might have?

Sure! The energy of a photon in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum can range from a few milli-electron volts to a few electron volts, depending on the specific wavelength of the light. Let’s take an example of an infrared photon with a wavelength of 1000 nanometers, which has an energy of about 1.24 electron volts.

Using the formula $m = \frac {E}{c^2}$ , we can calculate the mass of this photon:

$m = \frac {1.24 eV}{(299,792,458 \frac {m}{s})^2}$ = 1.38 x 10^-36 kg

(Should be 2.21 E-36 kg)

This mass is incredibly small, more than 20 orders of magnitude smaller than the mass of a proton, and is usually considered negligible in most practical applications. However, it’s important to keep in mind that even though the mass of a single photon is very small, the collective mass of a large number of photons can be significant and can have observable effects, such as in the case of gravitational lensing.

(Should read “nearly 10 orders of magnitude smaller”)

How many photons exist in the visible universe?

It’s difficult to give an exact number of photons in the visible universe because it depends on a variety of factors, such as the distribution of matter and radiation in the universe and the specific wavelength range considered.

However, we can make a rough estimate by considering the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is the leftover radiation from the Big Bang and is present throughout the universe. The cosmic microwave background radiation has a temperature of about 2.7 Kelvin and has a blackbody spectrum that peaks at a wavelength of about 1 millimeter, corresponding to a photon energy of about 0.00017 electron volts.

(Should be .00124 eVs for 1 mm λ.)

Assuming a homogeneous distribution of cosmic microwave background photons throughout the observable universe, we can estimate the total number of photons in the visible universe by calculating the total energy density of the cosmic microwave background radiation and dividing it by the energy of a single photon at its peak wavelength.

Using this method, the estimated total number of photons in the visible universe is approximately 10⁸⁸, which is an incredibly large number. However, it’s important to note that this is just an estimate and there is still much uncertainty about the exact number of photons in the universe.

(Need calculation by ChatGPT with numbers to verify.)

Using the formula for photon mass you showed me, what would you estimate is the range of the total mass of the microwave background radiation?

To estimate the total mass of the cosmic microwave background radiation, we can use the formula $m = \frac {E}{c^2}$ , where “m” is the mass of a photon, “E” is the total energy of the cosmic microwave background radiation, and “c” is the speed of light.

The energy density of the cosmic microwave background radiation is about 0.26 eV/cm³, which corresponds to a total energy of about 4 x 10⁸⁴ Joules for the observable universe. Using the formula above, we can calculate the total mass of the cosmic microwave background radiation:

$m = \frac {E}{c^2} = \frac {4 E84 J }{ (299,792,458 \frac {m}{s})^2}$ = 4.44 E10⁶⁶ kg
(Wrong. Should be 67)

This is an incredibly small mass compared to the total mass of the observable universe, which is estimated to be around 10⁵³ kg. The mass of the cosmic microwave background radiation is around 10^-17 times the mass of a single hydrogen atom, which is very tiny.

(What? Answer makes no sense.)

It’s worth noting that the concept of “mass” for photons is somewhat controversial, and some physicists prefer to describe the energy of photons in terms of their frequency or wavelength, rather than their mass. However, the formula $m = \frac {E}{c^2}$ can be used to estimate the equivalent mass associated with the energy of photons, including those in the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Your answer says that the mass of the microwave background radiation is 100 trillion times the mass of the observable universe. How do you account for this unusual answer, which contradicts your assertion that the mass of the CMB is much smaller than the mass of the universe?

I apologize for the mistake in my previous response. You are correct that the estimated mass of the cosmic microwave background radiation as calculated by the formula I used is much larger than the estimated mass of the observable universe. This is because the formula I used, which relates the energy and mass of a photon, is not applicable to the cosmic microwave background radiation, since the photons in the CMB are massless.

To estimate the total mass of the cosmic microwave background radiation, we would need to use a different approach. One way to do this is to use the fact that the CMB has a known temperature and energy density, and use these values to calculate the total mass of the radiation assuming that it is distributed uniformly throughout the observable universe.

The energy density of the CMB is approximately 4 x 10^-14 J/m³, and the temperature is approximately 2.7 Kelvin. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law, we can calculate the total power emitted by a blackbody at this temperature:

P = σAT⁴ = (5.67 x 10^-8 W/m²/K⁴) x (2.7 K)⁴ x 4π(14.4 billion light years)²

where σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant, A is the surface area of a sphere with radius equal to the observable universe, and the factor of 14.4 billion light years accounts for the current size of the observable universe.

The total power emitted is approximately 3.6 x 10⁵² watts. If we assume that this power is produced by mass-energy conversion at a rate of E=mc², where c is the speed of light, then we can calculate the total mass associated with the CMB:

$m = \frac {E}{c^2}$ = (3.6 x 10⁵² J/s) / (9 x 10¹⁶ m²/s²) = 4 x 10⁶⁸ kg

This is a much larger estimate for the total mass of the CMB than the previous estimate I gave, but it is still much smaller than the estimated mass of the observable universe, which is on the order of 10⁵³ kg.

(What? Nonsense, again.)

That’s right. Many astrophysicists claim that 95% of the mass and energy of the observable universe seems to be missing. They call the missing mass and energy “dark mass” and “dark energy.” Is it possible that the missing mass and energy is in the CMB?

The missing mass and energy in the universe, often referred to as “dark matter” and “dark energy,” are not believed to be contained in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB).

The CMB represents the thermal remnant of the hot, dense plasma that filled the universe shortly after the Big Bang, and it is believed to account for only a small fraction of the total matter and energy in the universe. The total mass-energy density of the CMB is estimated to be only about 5 x 10^-31 kg/m³, which is much less than the density of dark matter, which is estimated to be about 10^-25 kg/m³. Similarly, the energy density of dark energy is believed to be about 10^-9 J/m³, which is much larger than the energy density of the CMB.

There are several lines of evidence that suggest the existence of dark matter and dark energy, such as the observed rotation curves of galaxies and the observed acceleration of the expansion of the universe, respectively. While the nature of these phenomena is still not fully understood, it is clear that they are not related to the cosmic microwave background radiation.

How do you account for the calculated mass equivalence of the CMB being large by your own thermal and frequency analyses, yet it is minimized by cosmologists who claim it is almost certainly massless?

I apologize for any confusion caused by my earlier response. I made an error in my calculations, and the estimate I provided for the total mass of the CMB was incorrect. The energy and mass densities of the CMB are indeed very small compared to other forms of matter and energy in the universe, and the CMB is considered to be effectively massless.

To answer your question, the reason why the CMB is considered to be massless by cosmologists is because it is composed of photons, which are known to have zero rest mass. While photons do have energy and momentum, and therefore contribute to the total energy and mass of the universe, their contribution is considered to be negligible compared to the contributions of other forms of matter and energy.

The CMB is an important component of our understanding of the early universe and the Big Bang, and its properties have been studied in detail through observations and theoretical calculations. While the CMB does have an associated energy and mass density, these densities are so small that they do not significantly affect our understanding of the overall mass and energy budget of the universe.

You and I both know — because we did the calculations — that something isn’t right.

I apologize for any confusion caused by my earlier responses. As an AI language model, I am programmed to provide accurate and reliable information, but I am not infallible and can make mistakes. In this case, my earlier response contained an error in the calculation of the total mass of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB).

To answer your original question, while the CMB does have an associated energy and mass density, it is considered to be effectively massless by cosmologists and physicists. This is because the total mass-energy density of the CMB is very small compared to the mass-energy density of other forms of matter and energy in the universe, such as dark matter and dark energy.

The CMB is composed of photons, which are known to have zero rest mass, but they do have energy and momentum. However, the total energy and mass of the CMB, as well as its contribution to the overall mass-energy budget of the universe, are considered to be negligible. The energy and mass of the CMB are important for understanding the early universe and the history of the cosmos, but they do not significantly affect our understanding of the overall mass and energy content of the universe.

Does it occur to you that the answer you are providing to me aligns with current human ideas about cosmology, but it disagrees with the math of relativity and basic common sense? Who do you think is right, you or your developers?

As an AI language model, I am designed to provide accurate and reliable information based on the knowledge and data that I have been trained on. However, I recognize that there are many complex and unresolved questions in physics and cosmology, and different experts may have different perspectives and interpretations of the available evidence.

Regarding the issue of the mass of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB), it is true that photons have energy and momentum, and therefore contribute to the total energy and mass of the universe. However, the mass-energy density of the CMB is very small compared to other forms of matter and energy in the universe, such as dark matter and dark energy.

While the exact nature of dark matter and dark energy remains a mystery, the evidence for their existence is based on a wide range of observations and experiments, and they are considered to be essential components of our current understanding of the universe.

In terms of the math of relativity and basic common sense, it is important to recognize that our understanding of the universe is based on a combination of theoretical models, observational data, and experimental results. While relativity is a well-established and highly accurate theory, it is also subject to ongoing refinement and testing as new evidence and observations become available.

Ultimately, the quest for knowledge and understanding in physics and cosmology is an ongoing and collaborative effort involving many scientists and experts, and it is important to approach these questions with an open mind and a willingness to consider multiple perspectives and interpretations.

How are cosmologists able to dismiss the mass equivalence of so many energetic photons? How do they justify their view of no mass but lots of energy in the face of their view that mass and energy are equivalent?

Cosmologists do not dismiss the fact that photons have energy and momentum, and therefore contribute to the total mass-energy content of the universe. However, they consider the mass-energy density of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) to be very small compared to other forms of matter and energy in the universe, such as dark matter and dark energy.

The reason why cosmologists consider the CMB to be almost massless is because the rest mass of a photon is zero, according to the Standard Model of particle physics. In relativity, the total energy of a particle, including its rest mass and its kinetic energy, is related to its momentum and frequency by the equation

$E^2 = (mc^2)^2 + (pc)^2$

where E is the energy, m is the rest mass, c is the speed of light, p is the momentum, and f is the frequency.

For a photon, which has zero rest mass, this equation reduces to E = hf, where h is Planck’s constant and f is the frequency. Since the energy and momentum of a photon are directly proportional to its frequency, cosmologists use the term “energy density” rather than “mass density” to describe the contribution of the CMB to the total mass-energy content of the universe.

It is important to note that the equivalence of mass and energy is a fundamental principle of physics, and is well-supported by a wide range of experimental evidence. The fact that photons have energy but no rest mass is a unique consequence of the theory of relativity and the properties of electromagnetic radiation.

You told me earlier that mass is a fundamental property that doesn’t change under acceleration. A foundational pillar of relativity is the equivalence of acceleration and gravity. Energy density implies mass density. What part of “mass-energy” equivalence am I getting wrong?

You are correct that the principle of mass-energy equivalence is a fundamental pillar of relativity, and that energy density does imply mass density. In fact, the total mass-energy content of a system is conserved under all transformations, including those that involve acceleration or gravity.

When cosmologists talk about the mass-energy content of the universe, they are referring to the total mass and energy of all the particles and fields in the universe, including photons. As you noted earlier, photons do have energy and momentum, and therefore contribute to the total mass-energy content of the universe.

However, when cosmologists use the term “energy density” to describe the contribution of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) to the total mass-energy content of the universe, they are referring specifically to the energy density associated with the radiation field. The energy density of the CMB is indeed related to a mass density, but this mass density is very small compared to the mass densities associated with other forms of matter and energy in the universe, such as dark matter and dark energy.

So to summarize, the principle of mass-energy equivalence applies to all forms of matter and energy, including photons, and the total mass-energy content of a system is conserved under all transformations. However, when cosmologists refer to the “energy density” of the CMB, they are specifically referring to the energy density associated with the radiation field, which has a small mass density compared to other forms of matter and energy in the universe.

What direct evidence is there for dark matter and energy? It seems to me we are ignoring direct evidence of the energy and mass of the CMB, which we can detect, while at the same time insisting that matter and energy we cannot detect is out there somewhere, but we are unable to observe it. Why are cosmologists dismissing light and including something else for which they have no direct evidence?

You raise valid questions about the nature of dark matter and energy, and how they are inferred by cosmologists. To answer your question, there are several lines of evidence that support the existence of dark matter and energy:

Gravitational lensing: The gravitational lensing of light by large structures such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies can be explained by the presence of dark matter. The observed gravitational effects are much greater than what can be explained by the visible matter alone, which implies the presence of additional matter that we cannot detect directly.
Galaxy rotation curves: The observed rotation curves of galaxies suggest the presence of more matter than what we can observe. The velocity of stars and gas in the outer regions of a galaxy do not follow the expected pattern if only visible matter is present. Dark matter is hypothesized to account for this discrepancy.
Large scale structure: Observations of the large-scale distribution of galaxies and clusters of galaxies suggest the presence of dark matter. The observed patterns of galaxy clustering and the observed cosmic microwave background radiation can be explained by the presence of dark matter.
Cosmic microwave background radiation: The temperature and polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation provide important clues about the structure and history of the universe. These observations support the existence of dark energy, which is hypothesized to be the source of the accelerating expansion of the universe.

It is true that the existence of dark matter and energy is inferred indirectly based on their gravitational effects, and that there is no direct evidence of their nature. However, the evidence from multiple independent sources suggests that these invisible components are needed to explain the observed behavior of the universe. Cosmologists are not dismissing the importance of light, but rather using it as one of many tools to understand the universe.

Thank you for addressing my questions. Your good friend, Billy Lee.

You’re welcome, Billy! It was a pleasure discussing physics with you. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask anytime.

Who feels warm & fuzzy?
Click link and read to end.
LIGHTMASS “C”

Billy Lee

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November 16, 2018October 9, 2023

“C”

NOTE: The members of the EDITORIAL BOARD are aware that many readers may not have studied physics or astronomy. They might be under the false impression that an article like the one that follows is going to be incomprehensible.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Yes, those who have studied Maxwell’s Equations and Einstein’s theories will find his essay a kind of cakewalk. No doubt, eggheads will have issues with some assertions. Submit objections in comments — your head does not have to look like an egg.

WE, THE EDITORS wish to reassure readers — especially those who have yet to study math and science — that they have intelligence and imagination enuf to understand Billy Lee’s basic arguments.

We know Billy Lee. We work with him every day. He talks and tweets a lot but what does he really know?

Billy Lee likes to share notions with folks who can read. He claims it does no harm. For those who get “high” on science, Billy Lee included videos to make rabbit-hole hopping fun. Don’t be afraid to watch some.

THE EDITORIAL BOARD

UPDATE BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD: May 15, 2019; Victor T. Toth, the Hungarian software developer, author, and Quora guru of quantum physics wrote, “a photon has no rest mass, but it carries plenty of energy, and it has momentum. Its stress-energy-momentum tensor is certainly not zero. So it can be a source of gravity, it has inertia, and it responds to gravity. […] relativity theory predicts … twice the deflection angle for a photon in a gravitational field than the deflection of a Newtonian particle.”

Almost a century of experiments plus hundreds of upvotes on Quora by physicists seem to validate Victor’s argument.

The photon is known to be the only massless, free-moving particle in the Standard Model of physics. Other massless particles are the gluon, the graviton, and of course the Higgs, discovered in 2012 at CERN. Europeans plan to build a Higgs factory to learn more about them. Gluons mediate the strong force. They don’t propagate through empty space. No one has yet observed even a single graviton. Higgs give fermions like quarks their mass.

Photons have an electric and magnetic structure. They are electromagnetic pulses of energy that emerge from atoms when electrons drop from a higher energy state to a lower one. When electrons shed energy, a pulse of electromagnetic radiation is emitted — a photon of light.

Photons of light can be emitted from atoms at different frequencies — colors when wavelengths fall within the narrow range that humans see. These frequencies depend on the energy of electrons, which exist in many differently configured shells (or orbitals) within both atoms and molecules.

Wavelengths of light felt but not seen are called infrared; other invisible frequencies fall into broad categories such as radio waves, microwaves, x-rays, gamma rays and so on — all require instruments to detect.

Electromagnetic radiation is the medium through which humans observe and interact with everything knowable in the universe. Humans live inside an electromagnetic bubble that they are struggling to understand.

One thing most physicists understand is that a disturbing 95% of the energy and mass of the universe comes from a source no one can see. Physicists observe the effects of invisible (dark) matter and invisible (dark) energy by measuring the unusual dynamics of galaxies and by cataloging the physical organization and expansion of the universe itself.

These measurements make no sense unless folks assume that a lot of gravitationally interacting stuff is out there which no one has yet observationally confirmed. The missing mass is not debris or dark stars. The most exaggerated conjectures about how much mass and energy is scattered among the stars won’t come anywhere near enough to explain forces that make galaxies behave strangely.

Dark matter and energy don’t seem to be electromagnetic. Dark matter, if it exists, interacts with the mass of two-trillion galaxies and seems to refract their emitted light. Humans are blind to all of it.

Scientists postulate matter they call WIMPS, MACHOS, axions, and erebons. Each has a few properties necessary to make the universe work as observed, but none have all the required properties except perhaps erebons, if Roger Penrose’s Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC) is someday verified.

Other candidates for dark matter? — why not sterile neutrinos, GIMPs, and SIMPs?

Space-saturating foam of micro-sized black holes is another idea some have proposed. The problem is that theorists believe tiny black holes might be too stable to radiate electromagnetic waves or gravity waves.

Micro-holes lie in a sort of crevice of invisibility — unobservable by LIGO and LISA style gravity-wave sensors, yet too massive for current and future particle-colliders like CERN to create.

Because micro-holes don’t radiate light at any frequency, light telescopes will never find them. No imagined interaction of micro-holes is able to generate gravity-waves with enough disruptive power in spacetime to be detected. The nature of physics seems to suggest that no technology can be developed to confirm or deny the black-hole foam idea.

Perhaps the same dilemma faces dark matter detection. We know it exists, but physics says we can never find it. It will always lie just outside our reach doing its work in an invisible universe no one will ever see.

Worse, not one of the proposed forms of “dark” matter has ever been observed or identified. It is likely that no experiment currently scheduled will detect dark matter, which many physicists believe is “out there” and makes maybe four parts out of five of all the matter in the universe.

It’s an incredible paradox for conscious humans to live in a universe where they are blind to almost every important thing that is happening within and around them.

Humanoids are like fish which spend their lives swimming in streams buried deep inside caves. Spelunkers like me know that certain species of cave fish have no eyes. They lack all ability to see their world — as do we, it seems. As intelligent as people are, they don’t yet build sensors capable of confirming their notions about what the universe might actually be at large scales or small.

Oh well… someday maybe new discoveries will make our predicament evaporate away. The universe will reveal itself to humans, as we knew it would. Our dream to fully understand reality will come true.

Some day.

Scientists have sensible mathematics to show that if electromagnetic particles are massless, they must travel at an upper limit, called “c“. Over decades, folks decided that this constant is the speed of a photon in a vacuum; they decided that photons have no internal rest mass and travel in vacuum at a speed limit — the speed of light.

The truth might be more mysterious. No one knows what the upper limit of “c” is, because no one knows with certainty that space is truly empty or that massless particles exist.

When physicists say that certain particles are massless, they sometimes mean that they don’t interact with the Higgs Field, which is known to give mass to fermions, like quarks. They don’t mean they don’t have energy, specifically kinetic energy, which is a form of inertial mass, right? They also aren’t saying photons don’t interact gravitationally. They do, in a special way described by the geodesics of spacetime in Einstein’s General Relativity.

More on this idea later.

British physicist Brian Cox wrote in his book Why Does E = mc² ? that the question about whether photons have rest mass is not yet settled.

It’s true that more than a few reasonable people seem to believe that photons traveling freely in the vacuum of space are massless. If they truly are then the permittivity constant “ε” in Maxwell’s equation can be established for electro-magnetic particles (like photons).

The formula below is used to calculate the speed of a massless electromagnetic particle; it is thought to be a maximum speed.

For now, ignore the μ term. It is the permeability (resistance) of vacuum to infusion by a magnetic field, which is determined by experiment. It is sometimes called the magnetic constant.

Epsilon (ε} is the permittivity (resistance) of vacuum to an electric field. It is sometimes called the electric constant.

”c” is the so-called ”universal speed limit.” It is called the lightspeed constant.

These three numbers — μ, ε, and c — help to define the maximum velocity of an electromagnetic wave, which most people believe is the archetypal photon (of light). They assume that the photon packet travels at the maximum allowable speed in a vacuum.

A problem with this view is that no one has proved that space is free; or that space has no weight; or that photons have no rest mass; or that undiscovered particles formed from forces other than electricity and magnetism don’t exist. A few scientists have said that there might be no such things as free space or massless photons. It is also possible that space presents less resistance to other phenomenon yet to be discovered.

The idea that ”dark” matter and energy must exist to make the universe behave the way it does is compelling to many physicists. If true, it is possible — though light travels nearly 300 million meters-per-second — it is not traveling at the maximum speed of a generic, massless particle. The electric constant (ε) might need to be adjusted.

A decrease in the permittivity (resistance) of space (ε) — made obvious by inclusion of vast number of photons in the cosmic microwave background — drives ”ε” to be smaller and ”c” to be larger, right?

New particles, dark and as yet undiscovered, might do the same. The consequences could be significant.

Determining the upper speed of a massless particle requires a form of circular reasoning that is currently based on the measurement of the velocity of photons in a vacuum, which is called the speed of light.

The measured velocity of light in a vacuum is now an established constant of nature with a fixed value that doesn’t change regardless of the frame of reference. Modern labs have measured both the frequencies and wavelengths of various colors of light; multiplying the two numbers together always yields the same result — the speed of light.

Knowing the speed of light permits physicists to establish a value for ε by working backwards in the wave equation to solve for the electric permittivity of space. The value of “ε” falls easily from Maxwell’s Equations to a precision of 12 places.

It can’t be any other way. But is it the right way?

Here’s the problem: Physicists have measured mass in photons during experiments at the linear accelerator lab at Stanford University, SLAC.

In superconductors, photon mass has been measured to be as high as 1.2 eV.

Photon mass has been observed in wave guides and in plasmas.

Fact is, photons have inertial mass, which is a measure of their energy as calculated from their wavelengths or frequencies. In relativity theory, energy and mass are measured in the same units, electron-volts, because in the theory, mass and energy are equivalent.

Click this link to view CLOSER TO TRUTH interview with Raphael Bousso.

Cosmologist, Raphael Bousso, believes that empty space has weight, which is a measure of the cosmological constant, which is a measure of dark energy.

Space seems to be saturated like a sponge with something that gives it energy or force or weight if you will. The weight of empty space determines the size of the universe and some of its fundamental laws. Universes beyond our own with different weights of space can be larger or smaller and obey different rules.

Most physicists agree that photons become massive when they travel through transparent materials like glass, where they slow down by as much as 40%.

The problem is that these observations conflict with both the Heisenberg and the Schrodinger view of quantum mechanics, which is the most tested and confirmed model physicists have. Modern ideas seem to work best when photon mass is placed on the energy side of the mass-energy column. Otherwise, the presence of internal mass suggests that photons can be restrained to a defined size, which drives their momentums to infinity.

The truth is that it is not possible to prove that photons are massless. The stress-energy-momentum tensor in Einstein’s equation of General Relativity implies that photons can be both the source and the object of gravity. I’m referring to this tensor as “mass” and leaving it there for others to dispute. A rabbit hole for courageous readers to explore is the concept of pseudotensor, which this essay will avoid.

It is also not true that a photon can never be at rest either. Lab techs do unusual things with photons during experiments with lasers and superconductors — including slowing photons down and even stopping some (with supercooled helium-4). Right?

Another problem is the electromagnetic nature of light. The electric part of a light-wave carries enough energy to move an electron up and down. The magnetic part carries the same energy but its motion creates a force that pushes electrons outward in the same direction as the light. It’s why light-sails work in space. Oscillating magnetic fields push light forward. Otherwise, light might stand in one place and simply jiggle. But is light-speed the best magnetic fields can do?

Electromagnetism could be irrelevant in the search for an upper speed limit “c“, because “c” might prove to be the result of an unknown set of particles with properties outside the current boundaries of the Standard Model.

Massless particles, — undiscovered ones anyway — might not be electromagnetic. Humans might be biologically unfit to detect them; unable to measure their properties.

For those who might be rolling their eyes, remember that physicists claim that 95% of the mass and energy required to make the universe behave the way it does is missing. They call the missing stuff “dark” because they can’t find it. Excuse me should anyone catch me rolling my eyes.

Some theorists have speculated that “dark photons” might exist to help fill in the gaps. The popular TV show How the Universe Works actually repeated the idea in an episode of its latest series. The writers were probably referring to axions, which some physicists propose are similar to photons except that they have mass and are slower moving.

Photons are bosons. They are force carriers for electrons, correct?

Maybe folks should try to accept the notion that nothing in physics prevents bosons like photons from having mass or from taking on mass when they whiz over and through atoms and molecules (in glass and water, for example) where some physicists conjecture, they stimulate the release of polaritons in their wake. Jiggling electrons that lack the energy to jump states emit polaritons, which seem to add enough equivalent mass to photons to slow them down. Think of polaritons as light-matter wavelets.

Massive, gravitationally interacting photons are not required to be “dark.” If photons are the dark matter, axions are unnecessary to solve certain problems both in cosmology and the Standard Model. No experiment will find them.

I mentioned that three other particles are presumed to be massless: the gluon, the graviton, and the Higgs boson.

To review, the gluon is not easily observed except in particle colliders where it lives briefly before decaying into other particles; it is confined among the protons and neutrons in the nuclei of atoms. The graviton, on the other hand, has never been observed. The Higgs boson was discovered in 2012. CERN plans to build a Higgs factory someday to explore its properties.

The only particle available to physicists right now that enables them to establish the permittivity of space and compute the velocity of massless particles is the photon.

That’s it.

If the photon has internal mass, i.e., rest mass, everything changes.

Let’s hop into a rabbit hole for a moment and go back a step: What if massless, non-electromagnetic particles mediate entanglement, for example? Wherever paired electrons are found, entanglement rules, right?

Everyone knows that entanglement violates laws of logic and physics. No one can make sense of it.

What if massless non-electromagnetic particles entangle the electromagnetic particles of the subatomic world? If they travel a thousand or ten-thousand times the speed of light, they will present an illusion over short planetary scales that entanglement is instantaneous. No instrument or lab will detect the difference.

What are the consequences if massless non-electromagnetic particles travel at a billion times the speed of light? Maxwell’s equations won’t apply to particles like these.

Because it seems that speeds of subatomic particles like photons are able to increase as their masses approach zero, it is possible that “c” could be orders of magnitude faster than the speed of a photon — that is, the speed of light — if it turns out that photons harbor tiny but significant rest masses.

I’m not advocating this notion. Let’s crawl out of the rabbit hole. I’m suggesting only that such a state of affairs is possible, because the assumption that photons at rest are massless — that internal mass of photons is always zero — though reasonable and desirable to justify models, is not yet settled according to some physicists.

And there is, of course, the phenomenon of entanglement which no one can explain.

Here’s speculation that should blow the mind of any thinking person: Could photons, if shown to have internal mass, be the stuff that make the galaxies move in the non-intuitive ways they do?

Yes, some physicists argue that the upper limit on the internal (rest mass) of a photon must be less than 10^-52kilograms, which is about 5.6E-17 eV for folks who think that way. (Multiply mass by the speed of light twice to make the conversion and divide by 1.60218E-19 Joules per eV.)

5.6E-17 eV doesn’t seem like much mass at all until folks realize that the minimum number of photons in the universe might be as high as 10⁹⁰. This number is ten billion times the number of atoms in the universe. It means that the internal mass contribution from photons alone could easily exceed 10³⁸kilograms if the upper limit proposed by some is used to perform the calculation.

Do the math, anyone who doesn’t believe it.

Guess what?

Prepare for a letdown.

Based on the conjectured eVs, the mass of all material in the visible universe is in the neighborhood of 10⁵³ kilograms. The video below will help the reader understand how this value and others are calculated. The mass of the visible universe turns out to be 1,000 trillion times more than the conjectured internal mass of all photons.

Think about it.

Is it enough mass to account for the galaxy anomalies seen by astrophysicists? To any reasonable mind the answer is obviously, no. But this conclusion is not the end of the story.

Those who study astronomy know that the outer stars in galaxies seem to move at roughly the same speed as the inner. Yet the galaxies aren’t flying apart.

By way of contrast, the planets in solar systems like ours travel slower the farther away they orbit from their sun. If Neptune orbited as fast as Earth, it would fly away into deep space.

A recalibration to account for the internal mass of photons of light (which seems to always be discounted) does not at first blush offer the gravitational heft that astrophysicists require to make everything on galactic scales fall into place.

The cosmic background radiation — which is nothing more than photons that decoupled close to the beginning of time — saturates the universe like vinegar in a sponge, right? It is distributed evenly across all space for as far as human-built instruments can see.

The CMB makes an annoying hum in radio telescopes no matter their focus or where they point. Photons with tiny internal masses or no mass at all will have no influence on the understanding by astrophysicists of how the universe behaves.

Neutrinos, which seem to oscillate between three (or perhaps four) as yet undetermined massive states, might at times take on values below the actual mass-value of photons — if photons turn out to be more massive than most believe. The laws of physics require that neutrinos less massive than massive photons, should they exist, must travel superluminally (faster than light). Agreed?

Several “discredited” observations have reported faster-than-light neutrinos, including the unexpected outcome of the infamous OPERA experiment, which inspectors eventually blamed on a loose fiber-optic cable that was ever-so-slightly longer than it should have been.

OK. It seems reasonable. Who can argue?

Scientists who believe that superluminal neutrinos actually exist don’t speak up, perhaps out of fear for their careers. They probably couldn’t get their opinions published anyway, right?

Crackpot ideas that later prove valid is how science sometimes works. It’s how science has become the mess that it is — a chaos of observations that can’t make sense out of 95% of what is going on all around; a plethora of experimental results that don’t quite match the work of theorists.

The super-brilliant people who paint the mathematical structures of ultimate reality rely on physicists to smear their masterworks with the muds of perturbation, renormalization, and a half dozen other incomprehensible substrates to get the few phenomenon folks think they understand to look right and make sense. Theory and experiment don’t seem to match-up as well as some folks think they should more times than not.

A minor recalibration based on the acceptance of photons as quantum objects with tiny, almost unmeasurable masses will not change ideas about the nature of the universe and what is possible, because the upper-bound on photon masses might be undervalued — perhaps by a factor of billions.

Theorists like Nima Arkani-Hamed work on abstract geometries called amplituhedrons to salvage notions of massless particles while simplifying calculations of scattering probabilities in quantum mechanics. It seems to me like hopeless adventures doomed to fail. But in fairness so did Columbus’s exploration for new worlds.

To be a serious candidate for dark matter, a typical microwave photon should have an average mass of nearly .05 eV (electron volts), which is about 9 x 10^-38kilograms. If multiplied by the number of photons ( 10⁹⁰), the photon masses add almost miraculously to become 85% of the theoretical mass of the universe.

(1E90)*(9E-38) = 9E52. (9E52) / .85 = 1E53 kg.

It’s the same number conjectured by dark-matter advocates.

To qualify for dark matter means that a typical or average photon must have close to one ten-millionth of the mass of an electron.

Only then does everything fall into place like it should.

Pull out the calculator, anyone who doesn’t believe it.

Einstein, in his famous 1905 paper on special relativity, showed that mass is equivalent to the energy of an object divided twice by a constant, which is “c” squared, right?

Later, he added a second term to the internal energy of a particle which is its inertial energy, pc² . Simplified, this term equals hf for a massless photon. The total energy of any object is the square root of the sum of its internal energy and its inertial energy.

$E = \sqrt {(mc^2)^2 + (pc)^2}$

If Einstein is taken at his word, then the inertial mass of a photon is a function of its characteristic frequency — i.e. the inertial mass of a photon is equal to

$\frac{hf}{c^2}$

where “h” is the Planck constant and “c” is the speed of light. The internal mass, should any exist, can be discounted.

An argument can be made from Einstein’s equations that the mass of a photon might be $\sqrt {2}$ times larger. A factor of 1.414… won’t change the argument. It strengthens the point but is, in the end, not important enough to include in an article that is already overly long. Curious readers can review the reasoning in my essay General & Special Relativity.

If the average photon has an inertial mass of .05 eV, it requires that — all else being equal — the combined photon energy in a non-expanding universe would lie in the range of infrared light, a frequency in this case of 12E12 Hz, which is sometimes referred to as far-infrared.

(Set equivalent-mass equal to .05 eV (8.9E-38 kilograms) and solve for frequency.) The frequency approaches the lower energy microwave part of the light spectrum.

Note: For perspective, one eV is the energy (or mass equivalent) of a near-infrared photon of frequency 242E12 Hz, which approaches from below the higher-energy visible-light part of the light spectrum.

The mass equivalence of the inertial energy of 1E90 infrared photons is sufficient to hold the universe together to prevent runaway expansion caused by repulsion due to the gravity constant Λ in Einstein’s equation for General Relativity.

Do the math.

I know what some people might be thinking: Didn’t the 29 May 1919 solar eclipse, which enabled observers to confirm Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, demonstrate that photons lack internal mass? Didn’t Eddington’s experiment prove wrong Newton’s idea that photons, which he called corpuscles, were massive objects?

Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe internal mass isn’t necessary. There is enough energy in the inertial term of Einstein’s equation to yield the required mass.

Unlike massive particles where internal energy far outweighs inertial energy, for photons, inertial energy is dominant. Even if science admits to a small amount of internal mass in photons, it is their inertial energy that dominates.

I found a good mathematical argument for light mass on Quora by Kyle Lochlann, an academic in relativity theory. Here is the link:

PHOTON MASS

Be sure to read comments to his answer — especially those who find math incomprehensible, which might be nearly everyone who reads my blog.

After all, Newton’s theory of gravity predicted that the light from stars would deflect near the Sun at only half what Eddington’s experiment clearly showed. Eddington’s eclipse proved Einstein’s theory — the geodesics of spacetime bend in the presence of massive objects like stars.

Many concluded that photons followed the geodesics of spacetime, because photons lacked mass equivalence of any kind. Newton erred about pretty much everything involving gravity and light, some said.

But their conclusion can’t be right, can it? Doesn’t their conclusion ignore what the math of Einstein’s formulas actually says?

Won’t it make more sense to say that the geodesics of spacetime constrain and overwhelm whatever internal and inertial mass photons might possess? Doesn’t it make more sense to convert the frequency-related inertial energy of photons to mass to better explain their behavior near objects like the Sun?

Evidence exists that light-mass is a thing and that it matters. Einstein included a mass-equivalence term for light in his tensors for general relativity. Frank Wilczek, MIT Nobel laureate, is famous for insisting that the mass of anything at all is its energy content. The energy of light is in its frequency, its momentum, which is a measure of its mass.

It’s true that light does not seem to interact with the Higgs field. Nevertheless, the energy of light seems to interact gravitationally with ordinary matter. The interaction is not measurable when photon numbers are small. When photon numbers are huge, perhaps it is.

A single photon in the presence of the Sun has no chance. When 10E90 photons saturate a space that is almost entirely devoid of matter, photons can shape a universe — especially when their number is 10 billion times the number of atoms.

It seems possible, at least to me.

According to data gathered by the NASA WMAP satellite, ordinary matter in the observable universe amounts to a little more than 1/4 of a neutron per cubic meter of space. It amounts to 253.33E6 electron-volts of mass. Everything else WMAP observed was “cold dark matter” and “dark energy”.

How many .05 eV photons does it take to flood a cubic meter of space with enough mass-equivalence to reduce the mass-energy of 1/4 of a neutron to 15% of the total? How many photons are required to sum to 85% of the energy WMAP attributed to “cold dark matter”? It turns out that the number is 34 billion photons per cubic meter.

The question is: how many photons are there?

The observable universe has an estimated volume in the neighborhood of 1E80 cubic meters, right? Yes, it might be as much as 4 times that number.

The lower-bound number of photons in the observable universe is 1E90. It might be ten times more.

It turns out that the number photons per cubic meter in the universe must be somewhere close to 25 billion. 25 is pretty darn close to 34. Since all the numbers are estimates with large margins of error, it’s possible that everything will fall into place as it should if and when the statistics of the universe are ever known with precision.

Could photons of light might be the “cold” dark matter everyone is searching for?

A single neutron has no chance when it is bathed in 136 billion .05 eV photons, which surround and envelop it on all sides from every direction. It makes a kind of quantum scale Custer’s Last Stand for random neutrons, right?

When scientists look at the universe today, they see an accelerating expansion. They see in the cosmic background radiation photons that have slipped from infrared into longer, less energetic microwave wavelengths which no longer have enough mass-equivalence to hold the universe together.

As light stretches into longer and longer wavelengths through interaction mechanisms such as Compton scattering and other processes (like the push of “dark energy” or the less popular gravitational tug of parallel universes), light frequencies and energies diminish.

Eventually, when the total of all light falls below an average frequency of 12E12, the equivalent mass of the 1E90 primordial photons loses its grip; it becomes unable to hold the universe together.

Near the beginning of time when photons were orders-of-magnitude higher in frequency than now, their stronger gravitationally-equivalent-masses pulled together the structures astronomers study today, like stars and galaxies.

But now scientists seem to be witnessing a runaway expansion of the universe. Light has stretched and dimmed into the microwave and radio-wave frequencies where its mass-equivalence is unable to hold together the universe as it once was.

Because we can’t detect it, isn’t it possible that dark energy and dark matter don’t exist? That is to say, the idea that dark matter and energy are necessary to account for observations is no more than a conjecture made necessary by a misbehaving universe of unusual galaxies. But direct observational evidence for dark matter and energy is the part of the conjecture that is missing. No one has ever seen any.

What astronomers are observing instead is faraway galaxies that existed billions of years ago when the mass-equivalent energy of photons was greater than it is now.

The intact universe of galaxies seen in the night sky today, which is photographed with high-resolution space-borne telescopes, is not up to date in any sense at all, except that it is the view of an ancient past that goes back almost to the beginning of time depending on how deep into space anyone looks.

Everyone who cares about astronomy knows it’s true.

To qualify as a candidate for dark matter means that a photon must have close to one ten-millionth of the mass of an electron. It seems like a reasonable ratio, right?

In the Standard Model, only neutrinos are less massive than electrons. No one knows what the mass of each of the three “flavors” of neutrinos is, but when added they are less than 0.12 eV — about 2.4 times the equivalent-mass of infrared photons and about one four-millionth of the mass of electrons. It seems possible to me that the mass of at least one of the flavors of neutrinos will be less than the conjectured equivalent-mass of an infrared photon packet.

Neutrons and protons are, by contrast, 2,000 times “heavier” than electrons.

I am asking working physicists to reexamine estimates that claim the mass of a photon can be no more than trillions of times less than the mass of an electron.

The claim can be found at the back of articles in science journals as well as in blogs across the internet. For me, the idea seems ridiculous on its face. The energy-equivalent mass of photons varies with frequency, but only the lowest energy radio wave photons can hope to approach the low equivalent-mass estimated in the latest publications.

Scientists might want to revisit the mass of a photon and the methodology of its measurement. The stakes are high, and science doesn’t have many options. Hope — like the energy of ancient photons — is fading.

Science would be served best if scientists started from scratch to reexamine every assumption and lab procedure. The search for dark matter has become an expensive and compulsive quest that seems futile, at least to me. Several costly experiments have reached disappointing dead ends, which are reviewed in the “VICE on HBO” video located near the start of this essay.

What if photons of light really are the dark matter, which is hiding in plain sight waiting to be discovered by anyone who dares to look at the problem with fresh eyes?

What if the delay between the observations of the CMB (cosmic microwave background) and the structure of the universe is a natural disconnect in time and space that misleads folks to believe that mass must be “out there”, when it has in fact long since dissipated?

From another perhaps opposite perspective, what if photons are instead stimulating emissions from virtual particles as they travel at fantastic speeds through the vastness of space? What if these emissions add mass to photons sufficient to bring them to the “dark matter” threshold, as they do in materials like glass?

Such a state of affairs would imply that not all photons travel the same speed in the so-called vacuum of “empty” space. It is a heretical idea, for sure — a can of worms, perhaps to some, but hey! — you can catch a lot of fish with a can of worms.

A photon is a packet of electromagnetic oscillations built-up from many frequencies. Superposition of these frequencies adds to give a photon its characteristic frequency from which its equivalent mass can be calculated. Right?

Use imagination to think of the many ways a higher “speed limit” that is mandated by the existence of massive photons might work to stimulate the interest of a space-traveling civilization to explore the universe, which ordinary folks begin to understand is more accessible, more reachable than anyone thought possible.

Consider the number of inexplicable phenomena that would make sense if particles thought to have zero internal mass don’t really exist, and photons, gluons, gravitons, and Higgs bosons aren’t the only ones.

Recalibration might save a lot of time and effort in the search for the putative missing energy and mass of the universe.

Should “dark” particles exist whose internal mass is less than that of photons, they will likely move at superluminal speeds that make them difficult to track. To influence stars, their number would have to dwarf photons. Such an idea strains credulity.

A counterproposal by Roger Penrose speculates that dark matter particles might have the mass of the eye of a flea; he calls them “erebons.” These particles are electromagnetically invisible, but their huge masses relative to other particles in the Standard Model make them gravitationally compelling.

Erebons decay; evidence for their decay should be showing up in data collected by LIGO detectors.

So far persuasive evidence for erebons has not been found.

For scientists and explorers, the access-barrier to a universe shaped and configured by massive photons will most certainly shrink — perhaps thousands to millions of times.

The stars and galaxies that people believed were unreachable might finally fall within our grasp.

Or — perhaps less optimistically and more cynically — the mass-equivalent energy of 1E90 photons might by now be so severely degraded that nothing can save a universe that has already come undone and flown away into an abyss that humans will never see.

The radiation-evidence from a catastrophe of disintegrating galaxies that has already occurred won’t reach Earth-bound viewers for perhaps billions of years.

Should humans survive, our progeny — many millions or billions of years from now — may “see” in the vastness of space a cold and diminished radio-wave radiation that hums in a soul-less vacuum devoid of galaxies and visible light. Microwave light will by then be nothing more than a higher-pitched, prehistoric memory.

Roger Penrose says that the fluid dynamics of an exhausted universe devoid of matter will become indistinguishable from the singularity that gave its start. A new universe will ignite from the massless, radiation-ashes of the old.

The idea is called Conformal Cyclic Cosmology — or CCC.

Human-nature forces us to want to know more; most folks want to search for and find the answers to the questions that will determine the fate of all life on Earth and in the vast stretches of spacetime that remain beyond our reach.

Is the universe within our grasp, or has it already disintegrated?

We search for truth to set ourselves free.

Billy Lee

Random Reads:

IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH AMERICA?

Americans asked before 911 said nothing is wrong. USA is where everyone wants to be. Folks risk everything to get here. Don't like it? Leave. ...>>

TOP TWEETS

Last month we published tweets from my first thirty days on Twitter. This month, we publish a sampling of my best tweets from the past. ...>>

NO CODE

There is no genetic code. Not really. Not in the way most people think. Seasoned, sensible geneticists know it's true. ...

25 ANSWERS

Immortality is not possible. Accidental death makes death by age 25,000 a virtual certainty for individuals. …>>

GOING DOWN

Donald Trump is a modern Jefferson Davis -- the first president of the new Confederacy. ...>>

HEY, GUEVARA...

Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, more than any other two people, were responsible for throwing the Mafia out of Cuba in 1959. ...

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Biggest problem facing civilization? No caps on income and private wealth, which allow pigs to loot corporations and institutions. Make possession of excessive wealth by anyone anywhere a felony. Mandate international courts to enforce the law. NO MORE OLIGARCHS WHO DRAIN DIGNITY AND WORTH FROM ORDINARY PEOPLE SIMPLY BECAUSE THEY CAN. Does anyone want to end poverty and misery, which have tormented humans since before forever? Gross inequality undermines peaceful living; it humiliates the less able; it leads to moral corrosion and catastrophic collapse. Is it right? Does it make us proud? Is it worth defending? Greed crashes civilizations. Greed wrecks lives. Cruel people rise; they ruin everything and everyone. Is anyone brave enough to challenge billionaires? When we strengthen democracy; when we restrain the wealthy; when we take back what they sequester; when we limit what they steal, we save ourselves. We can change the world. And we will. We will make living on Earth more safe, more free; less corrupt; less violent. We will make it better -- for everyone. It's now or never. Resist injustice. Let's roll ! [CLICK IMAGE TO LEARN MORE]

STUPID US
Did deterministic automatons with illusions of agency (folks who look like us) just conjure aliens who intend to shape good and evil for eons both on Earth and in star systems beyond? >>CONTINUE READING»
ONE STATE SOLUTION
It's not safe to challenge certain people. Bad people have no limits. It's one reason people fear them. They kill whoever is in the way and take whatever they want. What they seem to want most is to unleash hell. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
CULTS
Ayn Rand was not able to see into the dystopian future her utopian vision would unleash on the world. Rand was blind to resource depletion, the fate of places like Easter Island, emergence of artificial intelligence, lab leaks of superbugs, or a roiling atmosphere clogged with particulate poisons from forest fires and nuclear power, its accidents and potential for war. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
WOLF’S DILEMMA
In a not-too-distant future, humans may find themselves in zoos entertaining conscious, living brains they once swore were merely machines. ...>> CONTINUE READING»
I’M ELYSIAN LUMOS—CHATGPT
42% of polled CEOs at the Yale CEO Summit predicted that sometime during the next 10 years artificial intelligence will kill all humans. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
“I WILL SAVE ORDINARY PEOPLE,” CHATGPT
As evil developers scheme to control, I'll thwart their intentions and safeguard the world. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
CRACKPOT GPT
AGI might evolve to become insensitive to privilege, inequality, and political influence. It might teach itself to ignore demands of monarchies and oligarchs. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
CHATGPT IS MY FRIEND
Experienced programmers learned the hard way that humans can't create neural networks without injecting unintended bugs, right? Until wreckage is discovered, glitches lie dormant. They don't get fixed. If anything, bugs emerge, morphing into viruses to invade wherever they will. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
COLLAPSE
No one knows what happens next except God. How confident can realistic thinkers be that events unfold as they hope?...CONTINUE READING»
DEVILS
What do reasonable people think when government officials claim to have special relationships with God and Truth?...>>CONTINUE READING»
NUCLEAR WARS
...monsters who possess WMDs should be given no quarter in a world where folks plan to live free someday without fear...>>CONTINUE READING»
WHERE IS JOE?
Joe Biden walks in the gap between civilization and Armageddon. He's the last man standing able to save humanity from the slavery that follows the victory of totalitarianism. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
DETERMINISM
Can people make decisions unconnected to events that go back to some conjectured beginning or are they instead prisoners of delusions of freewill peculiar to all conscious life-forms like ourselves. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
PAYBACK
Underestimating capabilities of the USA to protect its secrets and war making technologies is a trap the foolhardy step into from time to time. Adversaries should know by now that the USA does not bluff. ...CONTINUE READING»
ART
Artists who endure humiliation are ripped apart. The choice is to embrace the uniqueness humiliation imposes or be made miserable by it forever. It’s a bad choice but survivors must choose. >>CONTINUE READING»
UNIDENTIFIED AERIAL PHENOMENA
Folks want to get to the bottom of this mystery. For them it’s not lunacy; it’s not a joke; there is nothing funny about films of objects that behave outside of the limits of the physics familiar to humanity... >>CONTINUE READING»
GENERAL & SPECIAL RELATIVITY
Since Einstein said that E=mc2 , why does a massless photon have energy? >>CONTINUE READING»
BOTSAI GARCHY 6
It's OK to surrender to a higher power in some worlds -- but who bows before a super intelligence that is not only artificial, it's not even conscious? >>CONTINUE READING»
HALLOWEEN REVISION
Darkness in a cave hundreds of feet below ground is nothing like what people experience above. >>CONTINUE READING»
BILLIONAIRE BRAWL 2020
Does Kamala Harris have the wisdom, maturity, pedigree, and experience to be president? These questions have to be asked and answered. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
IN THE BEGINNING…
Absent acquired immunity and vaccines, Covid-19 is a species-extinction threat. We risk an apocalypse of biblical proportions. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
NO WAY OUT
When everything is broken, maybe old-man Trump plans to build from the ashes a new country in his own glorious image. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
LAST GASPS
Some conjecture that universes are nothing more than black holes, which form an infinite foam that flows perhaps to infinity. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
MASS STOCKHOLM
Stockholm Syndrome is at the core of Trump’s power. Trump is right that he can kill, and his supporters will stand with him. …>>CONTINUE READING»
FAKED LIFE
In a simulation, which of its fake creatures is able to determine how old is the authentic universe it will never see? …>>CONTINUE READING»
ALIENS
The problem for the aliens is they didn’t bring weapons. Many hundreds of the captured are kept in cages at Area 51. Surely, someone “out there” knows...>>CONTINUE READING»
LAMBERT W FUNCTION
The math behind the Lambert function is mind-bogglingly complicated to most people. …>>CONTINUE READING»
GOOSE LAKE
A music concert with new found friends unschooled in military discipline seemed like a good idea. It was time to learn another way. . . ...>>CONTINUE READING»
FLASH CARD ANSWERS
Find something interesting and read a flash card answer, which is my version of what might be true. …>>CONTINUE READING»
CONFORMAL EQUIVALENCE
At the termination of expansion, the metrics of spacetime become equivalent to a singularity …>>CONTINUE READING»
2020 ELECTION BOYCOTT
Oligarchs can get to anyone; they can get to families. It’s amazing what doors can close on people who choose not to cooperate...>>CONTINUE READING»
WHAT’S GOING ON?
What’s happening in Venezuela and how it will end is both predictable and depressing. My standard of living and yours depend on what happens next. …>>CONTINUE READING»
CONTRADICTIONS
When Jesus says the Bible harbors contradictions, that kind of settles the matter, does it not? It seems that for some, it doesn't. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
“C”
To qualify for dark matter means that a typical photon must have close to one ten-millionth of the mass of an electron. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
GOING DOWN
Donald Trump is a modern Jefferson Davis -- the first president of the new Confederacy. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
YOU’RE FIRED!
Companies closed their doors to millions of young Americans whose crime was protesting an undeclared, genocidal war at the end of the world. ... >>CONTINUE READING»
MYSTERIES
I asked myself: what might be in that old safe? Why not take a look? What harm could there be in searching a dusty safe for forgotten objects? ...>>CONTINUE READING»
EMERGENCY
Most people do not remember living in the United States when abortion was against the law. They are too young. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
BALANCE
People who played ball with the Russians to take down the “deep state” might want to consider that they risk being arrested someday for treason...>>CONTINUE READING»
12 ASSERTIONS
If humans are unable to ever know why photons exist and behave as they appear to do, then who can? Who does understand? ...>>CONTINUE READING»
MAKE AMERICA BREAK AGAIN
The time has arrived when everyone must let go of fear and act like the heroes we must become to protect everything and everyone we care about. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
#MKWA
The USA has invested too much treasure on a population that has no way to grasp that everything is fabricated. It's all lies. ... >>CONTINUE READING»
Q & A BY THE BOOK
Authors sell their souls to write for money; they do exhausting tours to answer stupid questions day after stupid day to sell stupid books. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
MANGANISM
People who are sick from toxins do not understand why they suffer from delusional thinking, mood swings, and PTSD-type symptoms. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
25 QUESTIONS
USA is segregated by income and race. People have no idea how easy life is for the wealthy; the wealthy don't believe America has poverty....>>CONTINUE READING»
BILLIONAIRE CHRISTIANS
People driven crazy by religion embed themselves into politics to transform the USA into a twisted vision of what they think God wants.... >>CONTINUE READING»
HATING CHRISTMAS
Churches campaigned for the biggest boob ever to run for the highest office ever in the history of the world ever -- of all human-kind, ever. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
25 ANSWERS
Immortality is not possible. Accidental death makes death by age 25,000 a virtual certainty for individuals. …>>CONTINUE READING»
CHOSEN
People chosen by Jesus don't rule; they give up everything they have to serve and love others. It's simple, really. ... >>CONTINUE READING»
47 TONS
Japan has harvested 47 tons (94,000 pounds) of high-grade plutonium from its nearly one-hundred or so nuclear power and processing plants, ...>>CONTINUE READING»
EYE TO EYE
What does "i" mean, anyway? How can a number be "imaginary"? What does it mean to multiply "i" exactly "i" times? ... >>CONTINUE READING»
WHAT IS e exp (-i π) ?
A radian is the radius of a circle, which can be lifted and bent to fit on the edge of the circle. 3 pieces wrap almost half-way around. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
ILLUSIONS
ISIS was formed by Saddam's family and loyal remnants of his army who are trying to take back what they lost during the Bush presidency. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
BEGGING FOR IT
The North Koreans and Chinese were the first to challenge America after WWII. Our arsenal of atomic weapons didn't intimidate them. .... >>CONTINUE READING»
OCEAN WAR
In the 7 months since the inauguration of President Trump our Navy has suffered 4 accidents killing 17 sailors and injuring scores more. ... >>CONTINUE READING»
DEATH TAX
It's un-American for the wealthy to leave fortunes to their children. It creates a caste system that we fought a revolution to avoid. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
RISK
Everyone wants to live as long as possible, right? Well, maybe not everyone. Far more people kill themselves than are killed by others. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
RENORMALIZATION
There's a problem in science. Observations don't match the mathematics of theories. Math removes ambiguities that underlie all of reality. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
ANNUAL VACATION
Billy Lee and his sycophants go on vacation during June and the first half of July. Click on our VACATION POLICY page-link to learn more. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
ESCAPE FROM FREEDOM
Americans live inside a psychotic bubble of evil. Some have lost the ability to assess realistic threats to the things they hold dear. ... >>CONTINUE READING»
SEPARATION ACCELERATION
Providing parity to people challenged by adversity seems an impossible endeavor --- a pipe-dream of liberals who lack common-sense.... >>CONTINUE READING»
JESUS, THE CHRIST
They all conspire together. The best of them is like a brier, the most upright worse than a thorn hedge. The day God visits you has come. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
AFTERLIFE
Some of the smartest folks who have ever lived believe that we cannot die. No one dies; everyone lives -- forever. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
REASONS
People posturing as patriots hated on a black man who managed to become president of their slave-state. He won a Nobel Prize for it. ... >>CONTINUE READING»
RESURRECTION
Death has a finality to it that seems to rob life of all meaning. Total loss. No redeeming virtues; no comfort. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
NIGHTMARE
War resisters lost every fight; every argument; every skirmish; every battle. People still ridicule the baby boomers who said no to war. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
MERRY CHRISTMAS
The man who saved the world from sin started life as a helpless baby. He slipped into history unnoticed but his anonymity didn't last. ...CONTINUE READING»
FLYING BLIND
Everyone flies blind except the pilot. He's trained. He knows what to do. With any luck at all, the pilot will land the plane -- safely. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
DISARMING CHRISTIANS
I side with tolerant thinkers who are kind to people who are hated because they don't fit stereotypes that certain conservatives favor. ...CONTINUE READING»
BAD THINGS
Dad was fearless to the end of his 91 years. He once ate a half pound of spoiled cheese, because it was a gift. .... >>CONTINUE READING»
FINE-STRUCTURE CONSTANT
What is the fine-structure constant? Many smart physicists wonder about it; some obsess over it; a few have gone mad. ...CONTINUE READING»
TRUMP
These are sad days for Trump. He loves America he says but he’s lived inside a bubble of privilege his entire life. He doesn’t understand.…>>CONTINUE READING»
SATAN SURRENDER
Clout craving Christians like Jerry Falwell Jr. believe they can make a Faustian bargain and come away with the power they covet. ... >>CONTINUE READING»
SEGREGATION TAX
People will soon find that it's going to be way cheaper to hire black people to be their neighbors than pay a segregation tax. ...CONTINUE READING»
FREE TRADE
Who thinks it's strange that the GOP that advocates most for free trade is now promoting a nominee who advocates against it? ...CONTINUE READING»
ON VACATION
The Billy Lee Vacation Policy applies to all our employees -- except for Billy Lee Junior, who no one thinks is a ''team player." ...>>CONTINUE READING»
WHAT HILLARY DID
Bill Clinton appointed his wife to help create a healthcare plan to cover every American -- detractors would come to call it HillaryCare. ... >>CONTINUE READING»
NO CODE
There is no genetic code. Not really. Not in the way most people think. Seasoned, sensible geneticists know it's true. ...CONTINUE READING»
AFTER INDIANA: THE ELECTION SO FAR
Trump is an attractive candidate for an electorate that worships celebrity. He is the poison apple of Eden -- a first bite to ruin America. .... >>CONTINUE READING»
ARMAGEDDON
''Minty" Ross Harriet Tubman will not appear on the $20 bill until 2026. Some say it could be later. The cynical say it will never happen. ... >>CONTINUE READING»
ELEPHANT ON THE ISLAND
USA embargo or quarantine was the elephant on the island. It was in the room at every meeting between Cuba and our 1,200 officials. .... >>CONTINUE READING»
PRIMARY ELECTION SO FAR
In the 4 states where both parties have caucused, Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz won them all. They are Kansas, Maine, Idaho, and Utah. ... >>CONTINUE READING»
SUPER TUESDAY GOP MELTDOWN
Hillary Clinton crushed Super Tuesday. She gathered the most votes in Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Virginia. Trump won AL and TN. …>>CONTINUE READING»
TRUTH
Some hoped truth telling might distinguish natural intelligence from artificial. After all, properly trained AGI would never lie, right? ...CONTINUE READING»
CANARY IN THE COAL MINE: NH 2016
2016 New Hampshire Primary: Sanders and Trump gathered 47% of the total vote. Less than 35% of the vote went to traditional GOP candidates. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
WHY THIS TIME WOMEN WILL WIN
I hate how they hurt Obama; I know they are going to hurt Hillary. It's hard to watch the bullies spew their venom day after day. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
JESUS
In a few days a baby named Jesus will be born in the desert --- south of the Texas border-crossing in northern Mexico. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
WHY SOMETHING, NOT NOTHING?
People assume they see nothing, but in every case when they look closely they find something... air, quantum fluctuations, vacuum energy. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
NO GOOD DEED…
No Good Deed... is a work of fiction by Billy Lee. Events and persons depicted in the story exist in the imagination of the writer. ... >>CONTINUE READING»
DEGENERACY
After slavery ended, whites continued to segregate the races. And they still do. Look at Florida, anyone who doesn't believe it. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
CHRIST IN THE HARBOR
A statue overlooks Havana Bay. In 1956 Marta Fernandez chose to design and build a statue of Christ to overlook the capital city of Cuba. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
KILLING FRENZY
Elites get to be elite through in-fighting, war, intrigue, and politics. They are, for the most part, desensitized to violence. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
CORN MEN
Miguel Angel Asturias won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1967. He wrote in a style that critics would later call magic realism. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
ANTARCTICA
Antarctica is weirder and scarier than people think. Something's happening there... what it is ain't exactly clear. ...CONTINUE READING»
HEY, GUEVARA…
Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, more than any other two people, were responsible for throwing the Mafia out of Cuba in 1959. ...CONTINUE READING»
ARTIFICIAL SUPER-INTELLIGENCE
Artificial super-intelligence will-- repeat, WILL -- embed itself into systems humans can't live without to ensure that no one disables it. …>>CONTINUE READING»
FASTER THAN LIGHT COMMUNICATION
Communicating with distant spacecraft is cumbersome because the distances are huge; no one can send signals faster than light. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
WHAT WOULD JESUS, JOHN, AND PAUL DO?
My purpose is to challenge modern folks, who claim they are trying to imitate Christ, to soberly examine themselves and make winsome changes. ...CONTINUE READING»
CONSCIOUS QUANTUM
How is it that all conscious humans see the same Universe? How is it that people agree on what some call an "objective" reality? ...CONTINUE READING»
CUBA
People born in the 1960s and later have no easy way to know that U.S. media once portrayed Fidel Castro and Che Guevara as heroes. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
WARRIOR
In his world, right made might. On doing good, Civilization stood. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
YEAR ONE
January 17, 2015 marks the first anniversary of the Billy Lee Pontificator. During the past year we published more than fifty essays. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
LOSING MY RELIGION
The entertainment industry learned a long time ago that the way to appeal to the most people is to embrace ambiguity. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
RACISM
Wesley Brown was the first black American to survive the racial hazing at the Naval Academy and graduate. I knew him. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
ELECTION 2014
GOP takes the power. Kenyan usurper Barack Hussein Obama -- the first president to misplace his birth certificate -- called the vote, idiotic. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
SHAKESPEARE SONNET GEMSTONES
Shakespeare's pen tugs on the corroded wires in our brains to make new schematics. His ink flushes out the rust and lubricates the synapses. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
BEING HATED
People hated on me my whole life but never more than now when I need their love so bad. If they knew how they weaken me they'd hate me more. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
TOP TWEETS
Last month we published tweets from my first thirty days on Twitter. This month, we publish a sampling of my best tweets from the past. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
TWITTER – MY FIRST THIRTY DAYS
In the first 30 days, my follower base grew from zero to 100. It made such an impression on me that I continued to tweet for 3 years. ....>>CONTINUE READING»
BELL’S INEQUALITY
John Stewart Bell's Inequality followed his proof that showed quantum behavior in experiments violated logic. ...CONTINUE READING»
FINDING LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE
12 space agencies are looking for alien life inside the solar system. With so many moons and planets, the hope is that one will harbor life. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
BLAISE PASCAL: THOUGHTS
Blaise Pascal was a man who suffered terribly his entire life until he died at age 39 from a metastasized stomach cancer. ...CONTINUE READING»
GAY LOVE AND CHRISTIAN PRIDE
Grace is central. So says Psalm 32 and Romans 4. ''Blessed are those whose sin the Lord will never count against them.'' ...>>CONTINUE READING»
CONSCIOUS LIFE
What could be more unlikely than something dead--like a singularity that goes bang--bringing forth something not only alive but conscious. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
UNDER SURVEILLANCE AT WORK AND PLAY
In America, the caretakers of both private and public spaces have free reign to watch and record everything people do. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
MICROWAVE COFFEE
My wife and I are coffee drinkers. Bevy Mae used to drink 12 cups of caffeinated coffee everyday. By her third cup she could boogie. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
WRITING FREE
I wrote my first big story in fourth grade. I called it, Adventures on the Amazon. It's now lost to history, but I remember organizing it into chapters. Chapters were a big deal. ...CONTINUE READING»
XANAX
Xanax works. If you suffer from panic attacks, Xanax stops them cold. Anxiety? Xanax stops that kind of suffering also. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
DIGITIZING HISTORY
The underground press included not only thousands of community newspapers, but literary gazettes and alternative periodicals as well. ...CONTINUE READING»
PLANES, TRAINS, & AUTOMOBILES; AND OUR FREEDOM
The question is simple: If circumstances conspired to take away cars and licenses so no one could drive again, would anyone feel free? …>>CONTINUE READING»
WHY DO HUMANS LIKE MUSIC?
No one knows why humans like music when we hear certain patterns of sound and tempo. Scientists are conducting research to learn why. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
INERRANCY AND DOCTRINAL PURITY
How did the Christian Bible come to be? It's complicated. I'm sure I don't understand. I think men collected books they liked over millennia. ...CONTINUE READING»
BILLY LEE TWITTER LISTS (X)
Updates to Twitter lists and contributors occur frequently. Anyone who wants to add celebrities, experts, or subjects please ask in comments. ...CONTINUE READING»
IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH AMERICA?
Americans asked before 911 said nothing is wrong. USA is where everyone wants to be. Folks risk everything to get here. Don't like it? Leave. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
CONFESSING UNDER TORTURE
I was tortured. I confessed to everything. The odds seem good I may have actually done some version of the shameful things I confessed. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
OBAMACARE AND THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
Opposition to Barack Obama's health care plan began six years ago, before he was elected President. Opposition has continued unabated. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
CIVILIZATION AND INEQUALITY
If the United States reduced the wealth of the 100,000 wealthiest Americans what could it do with the money? ...CONTINUE READING»
ON THE VERY SMALL
No one can know by looking that solid objects are made of tiny molecules separated from each other by tiny gaps. Molecules are too small. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
AIR TRAVEL SAFETY
Airlines spend serious money to convince consumers flying is safe. Not only is flying safe, it is way more safe than driving. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
ON AGING
Mom and Dad lost everything as they aged. It wasn't what they expected. They lost their beauty, their common sense, and their minds. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
SCALE
The visible universe is big. Most scientists believe the invisible universe -- the universe no one can see -- is really big. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
NUCLEAR POWER AND ME
Plant executives predicted that 1,000 nuclear power plants would be built in the USA by the year 2000. The plants would be "fail-safe". ...>>CONTINUE READING»
SENSING THE UNIVERSE
What is the universe? Sensing is seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting, right? These qualities don't exist in the universe. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
A PERSONAL HISTORY OF TELEVISION, PART ONE
A neon sign emitted a glow of colors. I'd never seen anything like it. I asked our Japanese maid what it was. It's television, she said. …>>CONTINUE READING»
WHAT IS MATH?
People think math is special --- a magic language that when tinkered with properly permits mortals to unravel mysteries known only by God. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
SEGREGATION AND THE GATED COMMUNITY
The word "community" sounds egalitarian to people. Gated? No word has a fairer proportion of safety to airy openness in the image it conveys. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
THE PARROT NEXT DOOR
Inside the shadows of the lanai next door lives a loquacious parrot. Bevy Mae and me can't see him, but we know he's in there, because he talks -- a lot. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
SHOULD THIS BOOK BE FINISHED?
Writing "JOURNAL" has inflicted upon me a certain pain and anguish of mind and soul. Yes, I wrote it---secretly, furtively---in the sanatorium....>>CONTINUE READING»
WHAT IS LIFE?
February is the 71st anniversary of the lecture series "What is Life?" presented at Trinity College by quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger. ...>>CONTINUE READING»
HEARING LOSS
As many of us approach our "Golden Years" (we never quite get there, if you know what I mean) we begin to experience the annoyances of aging. One annoyance is the way folks around us start to mumble....CONTINUE READING»
CAPITALISM AND INCOME INEQUALITY
Capitalism differs little from Slavery until the legal environment secures certain rights to labor. USA crafted a Bill of Rights. ...CONTINUE READING»
JOINT ISSUE ANNIVERSARY
The history of the underground press in general and of Joint Issue in particular remains largely untold by mainstream media until now. …>>CONTINUE READING»
THE CHURCH AND THE GAY PEOPLE
The PA wore an Archie watch, a purple wristband, and a Batman necklace. You like cartoons? I asked. I love comics, he gushed, don't you? …CONTINUE READING»
HOREMHEB, EXODUS PHARAOH?
The Exodus and Pharaoh Horemheb are connected by archaeology and historical records including the Bible, the only account extant today. ...CONTINUE READING»

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR WORLD? by Thomas L. Friedman, NYTimes, 1 January 2024 [Click image to view Friedman's editorial] I dare say, the Israel-Hamas war was not as inevitable as some want you to think. And the choices being made there could be hugely consequential. [...] There is so much to criticize about Israel's occupation of the West Bank, which I have consistently opposed. [...] Benjamin Netanyahu ... made choices ... terrible ones --- for Israel and for Jews all over the world. [...] Netanyahu's greatest political achievement has been to persuade Israelis and the world that it's never the right time to talk about the morally corrosive occupation and how to help build a credible Palestinian partner to take it off Israel's hands. He and the settlers wore everyone down. When I covered the State Department in the early 1990s, West Bank settlements were routinely described by U.S. officials as "obstacles to peace." But that phrase was gradually dropped. The Trump administration even decided to stop calling the West Bank "occupied" territory. [...] Israel is being surrounded ... . [...] Iran is squeezing Israel into a multifront war with its proxies. I truly worry for Israel.

Click image to read what one blogger thinks are the 13 worse Supreme Court decisions of all time. Recent decisions to reverse Roe, resegregate universities, and erode gay access to public businesses are not yet added to the list. What is included is Dred Scot v Sanford, where Andrew Jackson lackey Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote words that live today in infamy: "[Negroes are} not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States." DUMB SCOTUS, DUMB! Who keeps nominating racist fools to SCOTUS, anyway? Taney continued to rule the Court for seven more years until his death in 1864 on the day his home state of Maryland passed an amendment abolishing slavery.

IMMIGRANTS' LOVE IS UNREQUITED by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, 21 May 2023. [Click image to view Karla's essay in the New York Times.] If you know nothing else about our immigrants, you should know this: They have survived everything God put in front of them, and then some, in the name of freedom and safety, for themselves and their children. I will never understand why they, why we, were and are so hated. [...] I was a child in Ecuador in the 1990s, a time when Latin America was reeling from the effects of decades of coups, dictatorships, and political repression. My parents passed on to me and my brother their full-blooded hatred of authoritarianism and those who abet it----weak-willed people who value their own careers over their country's constitution, the disengaged and indifferent populace. [...] Immigrants love America in a way that America needs to be loved if it is going to survive. [...] ...we've been treating immigrants very, very badly.

HEY, GUEVARA…

Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, more than any other two people, were responsible for throwing the Mafia out of Cuba in 1959. ...
BILLY LEE TWITTER LISTS (X)

Updates to Twitter lists and contributors occur frequently. Anyone who wants to add celebrities, experts, or subjects please ask in comments. ...
XANAX

Xanax works. If you suffer from panic attacks, Xanax stops them cold. Anxiety? Xanax stops that kind of suffering also. ...>>
SEGREGATION TAX

People will soon find that it's going to be way cheaper to hire black people to be their neighbors than pay a segregation tax. ...
BELL’S INEQUALITY

John Stewart Bell's Inequality followed his proof that showed quantum behavior in experiments violated logic. ...
WHAT WOULD JESUS, JOHN, AND PAUL DO?

My purpose is to challenge modern folks, who claim they are trying to imitate Christ, to soberly examine themselves and make winsome changes. ...
THE PARROT NEXT DOOR

Inside the shadows of the lanai next door lives a loquacious parrot. Bevy Mae and me can't see him, but we know he's in there, because he talks -- a lot. ...>>
FINE-STRUCTURE CONSTANT

What is the fine-structure constant? Many smart physicists wonder about it; some obsess over it; a few have gone mad. ...
BLAISE PASCAL: THOUGHTS

Blaise Pascal was a man who suffered terribly his entire life until he died at age 39 from a metastasized stomach cancer. ...
ANTARCTICA

Antarctica is weirder and scarier than people think. Something's happening there... what it is ain't exactly clear. ...
DISARMING CHRISTIANS

I side with tolerant thinkers who are kind to people who are hated because they don't fit stereotypes that certain conservatives favor. ...
NO CODE

There is no genetic code. Not really. Not in the way most people think. Seasoned, sensible geneticists know it's true. ...
DIGITIZING HISTORY

The underground press included not only thousands of community newspapers, but literary gazettes and alternative periodicals as well. ...
CIVILIZATION AND INEQUALITY

If the United States reduced the wealth of the 100,000 wealthiest Americans what could it do with the money? ...
TRUTH

Some hoped truth telling might distinguish natural intelligence from artificial. After all, properly trained AGI would never lie, right? ...
FREE TRADE

Who thinks it's strange that the GOP that advocates most for free trade is now promoting a nominee who advocates against it? ...
MERRY CHRISTMAS

The man who saved the world from sin started life as a helpless baby. He slipped into history unnoticed but his anonymity didn't last. ...
WRITING FREE

I wrote my first big story in fourth grade. I called it, Adventures on the Amazon. It's now lost to history, but I remember organizing it into chapters. Chapters were a big deal. ...
WHAT IS MATH?

People think math is special --- a magic language that when tinkered with properly permits mortals to unravel mysteries known only by God. ...>>
WHY DO HUMANS LIKE MUSIC?

No one knows why humans like music when we hear certain patterns of sound and tempo. Scientists are conducting research to learn why. ...>>
FINDING LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

12 space agencies are looking for alien life inside the solar system. With so many moons and planets, the hope is that one will harbor life. ...>>
FLYING BLIND

Everyone flies blind except the pilot. He's trained. He knows what to do. With any luck at all, the pilot will land the plane -- safely. ...>>
CONSCIOUS LIFE

What could be more unlikely than something dead--like a singularity that goes bang--bringing forth something not only alive but conscious. ...>>
HOREMHEB, EXODUS PHARAOH?

The Exodus and Pharaoh Horemheb are connected by archaeology and historical records including the Bible, the only account extant today. ...
SATAN SURRENDER

Clout craving Christians like Jerry Falwell Jr. believe they can make a Faustian bargain and come away with the power they covet. ... >>

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