Properties of elysons and of the elysium

[LB <paraphrase>] A medium must be stiff like a solid to support the propagation of transverse wave energy.
[tvf] "Not so. Oceans carry transverse waves but are hardly "stiff".


My apologies for the sloppy wording. I should have said a medium must be stiff like a solid to support the propagation of transverse wave energy <u>within its bulk</u>.

Surface waves in the ocean are a special case, relying on a liguid/gas boundary created by the interaction of gravity with media density differences, and a restoring force perpendicular to this boundary also caused (in part) by gravity. These surface waves cannot propagate in bulk water.

I'm also about 99.99% sure that transverse waves cannot propagate through bulk liquids and gasses. Possible exception - short range, a wavelength or so. It is the strength of the electrical forces among neighboring atoms/molecules that makes the difference, combining to supply a three dimensional restoring force within the bulk medium as each particle is displaced. This restoring force ranges from moderate to very high in solids, but is close to zero in liquids and gasses.

The speed of propagation of transverse waves is also a function of the strength of the available restoring forces. Stronger forces mean the material is harder or stiffer. As hardness or stiffness increases the individual atoms are displaced over smaller distances and pass their displacement along to the next atoms over shorter periods of time.

The very high propagation speed of light waves in elysium argues for very strong restoring forces among neighboring elysons and for very small elyson displacements as a wave passes by. (This should be true whether elysium is contiguous or discrete.)

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Gravitons and elysons also comprise two media that interact, but they are mixed media that interact everywhere within their mutual bulk rather than at a surface or boundary that separates the two media. And there is no restoring force at the boundary, mostly because there is no boundary.

[tvf] "The transverse wave requirement means only that the medium must be contiguous like an ocean, ... "


For normal matter I submit that this should be 'contiguous like rock'. Have I convinced you on this point?

[tvf] " ... not discrete like air."


Agreed, for normal matter. At this time I still believe I can show you a discrete model of elysium that can support the propagation of transverse wave energy. But, we shall see.

[tvf] "I have described the action of gravitons near masses as increasing the density of elysium. Using the ocean analogy, density cannot change, but pressure does. So it is possible that only elysium pressure increases near masses, not density. I have not yet thought of a critical test that might distinguish these two possibilities."


The model of elysium I'm working on has the same ambiguity. Elysium is likely to be mostly incompressible (because of the very large forces among neighboring elysons), favoring pressure gradients over density gradients. But I'm not sure. And I think it might be a function of how close you are to the center of the overall mass of elysium. All we know about that right now is that the overall mass of elysium is larger than the visible universe.

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I too have yet to think of a distinguishing test. Too bad we can't really tag elysons so they glow. But I've heard of experiments where they can make individual atoms glow brightly enough to be naked eye visible. Perhaps someday ...

LB

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Larry Burford</i>
<br />a medium must be stiff like a solid to support the propagation of transverse wave energy <u>within its bulk</u>. I'm also about 99.99% sure that transverse waves cannot propagate through bulk liquids and gasses.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Underwater detonations set off three-dimensional shock waves that presumably must be transverse as well as longitudinal precisely because oceans are a contiguous medium. Also, the ability of whales to communicate over great distances indicates that underwater waves are not attenuated very much.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">The very high propagation speed of light waves in elysium argues for very strong restoring forces among neighboring elysons and for very small elyson displacements as a wave passes by. (This should be true whether elysium is contiguous or discrete.)<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">There is a relation between mean elyson speed and the resulting wave speed. So it seems only necessary that elysons have a high vibration speed, or that they transmit pressure very efficiently.

Please note that I will be on travel for the next week. -|Tom|-

[LB] " ... a medium must be stiff like a solid to support the propagation of transverse wave energy within its bulk. I'm also about 99.99% sure that transverse waves cannot propagate through bulk liquids and gasses.

[tvf] "Underwater detonations set off three-dimensional shock waves that presumably must be transverse as well as longitudinal precisely because oceans are a contiguous medium. Also, the ability of whales to communicate over great distances indicates that underwater waves are not attenuated very much."


After further study, I'm now 100% sure that transverse waves cannot propagate through bulk liquids and gasses. If elysium exists it must <u>behave</u> as if it is orders of magnitude stiffer than any solid we have ever encountered. But it can, and I'll get to that part if we can find a way to agree about this.

Whale communications are known to use sound (longitudinal) waves which do indeed travel with great efficiency in water.

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Surface waves in water are still a good visual analog for beginning the study of transverse waves, but it turns out they are not a good physical analog for developing a deep understanding of how they work within bulk media. (Pun intended.)

LB

[LB] "The very high propagation speed of light waves in elysium argues for very strong restoring forces among neighboring elysons and for very small elyson displacements as a wave passes by. (This should be true whether elysium is contiguous or discrete.)"

[tvf] "There is a relation between mean elyson speed and the resulting wave speed. So it seems only necessary that elysons have a high vibration speed, or that they transmit pressure very efficiently."


From your article in <i>Pushing Gravity</i>, this relation is - Per your discussion this equation is explicitly for normal matter in the gas phase. None of the standard discussions of wave speed I've found relate wave speed to particle speed. In Halliday and Resnick there is an equation for transverse wave speed in a stretched wire: Physically it is easy to imagine how this equation for transverse wave speed works. As the tension in a wire becomes lower each element of the wire has to move farther to pass a given amount of force / energy / power to the next element. It takes longer for that to happen and the wave moves more slowly. If the tension drops to zero so does the transverse wave speed.

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H & R goes on to discuss similar equations for longitudinal wave speed in fluids and solids, but not for transverse wave speed in fluids. It also has no explicit discussion of transverse waves or the speed there-of in bulk solid media. So I looked on the 'Net and found several discussions of seismic waves within the Earth that do explicitly address this issue. They refer to bulk waves as body waves. In seismology longitudinal body waves are called primary waves (p-waves) because they travel fastest and are detected first. Transverse body waves are called secondary waves (s-waves). In solids a longitudinal stress produces both longitudinal and transverse strains as the longitudinal body wave propagates. In fluids a longitudinal stress produces only longitudinal strains because the sheer modulus is zero, causing the second term in the numerator to be zero. It seems reasonable that if a longitudinal stress in a solid causes both longitudinal and transverse strains in that solid, then a transverse stress in a solid ought to do the same. But that is apparently not the case. The vibrations caused by a longitudinal body wave cause a volume change. No volume change with a transverse body wave.

Most of these discussions of siesmic body waves conclude by observing that " ... an important distinguishing characteristic of an S-wave is its inability to propagate through a liquid or a gas because liquids and gasses cannot transmit a shear stress and S-waves are waves that shear the material".

Surface waves receive a brief separate mention. Longitudinal waves at the surface are called Rayliegh waves, transverse waves at the surface are called Love waves. Surface waves are slower than body waves, with Rayleigh waves being the slowest.

Love waves and Rayleigh waves are dispersive - wave speed is a function of wave length. Body waves are not.

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In the world of normal matter, only solids can propagate transverse wave energy. Even though liquids have contiguous particles, that is not sufficient for the propagation of transverse waves within their bulk. Hence my contention that elysium must be stiff like a solid, rather than contiguous like a liquid.

In fact, the elysium model I'm looking at now suggests that contiguous elysons are neither sufficient nor necessary for the propagation of transverse body waves.

Am I making any progress?

Regards,
LB

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Larry Burford</i>
<br />After further study, I'm now 100% sure that transverse waves cannot propagate through bulk liquids and gasses. If elysium exists it must <u>behave</u> as if it is orders of magnitude stiffer than any solid we have ever encountered. But it can, and I'll get to that part if we can find a way to agree about this.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">You have not said what convinces you that transverse waves cannot propagate through bulk liquids.

My argument is simple. A contiguous medium, by definition, has no room for molecules to be moving about at some high speed, the way air molecules do. So we must consider another way for forces to be propagated through it. If a force causes one molecule to push its way through adjoining molecules, it will displace any molecule directly in front of it longitudinally, but will also displace any molecules slightly to either side of its path in that sideways direction. This produces a transverse displacement along with a longitudinal one.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Whale communications are known to use sound (longitudinal) waves which do indeed travel with great efficiency in water.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">There are no air molecules, or any kind of free molecules, underwater. So we must come to understand exactly how underwater "sound" waves are transmitted, because it cannot be the same as for sound waves in air. Is there some reaon why you called the underwater sound waves "longitudinal" other than your association with sound waves in air?

It is probably also relevant here that I have been persuaded that physics is mistaken about lightwaves being purely transverse waves. Myron Evans' arguments that light also has a longitudinal component seem reasonable. And he is certainly not thinking in terms of elysons. But if that is true for light, why wouldn't water (another contiguous medium) transmit the same kind of 3-D waves, longitudinal and transverse?

Note that I'm being somewhat devil's advocate here. It may well be that, in contiguous mediums, there are only pressure waves with no actual medium waves (underwater or elyson waves). But before we entertain the idea that physics has been wrong (again) in its picture of light as a transverse wave, I'd like to hear some good argument that such material waves do not exist. For I can think of no good reason why all contiguous mediums should not be the same in this particular. -|Tom|-

(sorry about the delay in getting the second part of this posted - I should have said something)