The Total Perspective Vortex

You know, of course, about the Total Perspective Vortex, as described by Douglas Adams. But did you know that it is not fiction, but fact, based on sound physical principles – Mach’s Principle, to be precise? It is actually possible to get real information about the larger universe out of a small piece of fairy cake. And it has been done, sort of. Let me explain.

The experiments are usually done with a glass of water, rather than a fairy cake, but the principle is the same. Every molecule of water feels the rotation of the Earth, knows which way the axis is pointing, knows where the Sun is, and how many days there are in a year. Preposterous! you might say. How do you know the molecule of water knows all that? How do I know? I know because I asked the glass of water, and it told me. It gave me two numbers, the mass ratios of the electron, proton and neutron. And from those two numbers I calculated the number of days in a year to be 363, and the angle of tilt of the axis to be 23.44 degrees.

Preposterous! They say. Absurd! These mass ratios have nothing to do with the motion of the Earth! They are universal constants! They say. I say: prove it. Take your glass of water to the Moon, and do the experiment on the Moon. Then come back and tell me the result. Then we can discuss it. But if you refuse to go and do the experiment on the Moon, then I refuse to accept your argument. The “universality” of these “constants” is no more than a hypothesis, and I adopt the opposite hypothesis, that they are not constants.

One particularly egregious troll suggested my idea was absurd, because it would give a supposedly “ridiculous” answer on Uranus. Well, troll, go to Uranus and do the experiment. Otherwise you are not doing physics, but metaphysics, and your opinions are worth nothing.

Anyway, as I explained in the previous post, neutrinos are the only particles we know about that could in principle enforce Mach’s Principle in the entire universe. So Occam’s Razor says that until proved otherwise, or until some other potential enforcers are found, we can suppose that the neutrinos do enforce Mach’s Principle. Now, when a neutron decays into a proton and an electron, it sends out an antineutrino to tell the rest of the universe what has just happened. This antineutrino joins all the rest of the neutrinos and antineutrinos in an army of law-enforcers to ensure that Mach’s Law is not violated. And notice also that this antineutrino conveys not the mass of the electron, but its total energy. This is the information that General Relativity needs to know in order to enforce the Law of Gravity.

The neutrinos, in other words, are the secret agents of General Relativity. And I mean that completely literally: they are secret, because they are almost impossible to detect, and they are agents, because they act, that is, they do the work. If you want to know how they work, ask the KGB. Oh, no, that won’t be any good – of course, the KGB know how neutrinos work, but they are not going to tell you.