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Jesse and George:
the cobbler apprentice speaketh:
you, mathematically high-minded savants look for a
primitive realization of 'negative mass' etc, while
you find it natural to use negative numbers. If I was
185lb last week and now 180 lb, then I have 5 lb in
negative.
Of course I cannot physically identify the 'missing
mass', but mathematically it exists and I can
calculate with it, speak about it, think about it: it
'exists'.
Not " a piece of negaitive mass", of course. You got
used to "how much is minus 2" as a POSITIVE value, it
is a matter of habit-speak, it means: missing from the
rest. "As compared to..." washed away in routine talk.
I wouldn't look for something positive in negative.
What you are missing is the language to fit it into
any theory made up for poitive items. Imagine the
confusion when the zero was invented. Does zero exist?
(Ask Hal)
Have a good day
John Mikes
--- Jesse Mazer <lasermazer.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> George Levy wrote:
> >
> >Negative matter/energy however are different. If
> negative matter/energy
> >could exist they would give space a negative
> curvature.
>
> The issue of negative curvature is somewhat separate
> from negative mass,
> though--if the density of matter/energy in our
> universe was below the
> critical density Omega, the universe would have
> negative curvature, no need
> for negative mass (see http://tinyurl.com/9ox67 ).
> It might be true that
> adding a certain density of negative mass/energy
> would have the same effect
> on spacetime curvature as subtracting the same
> amount from the density of
> positive mass/energy though, I'm not sure.
>
> >Negative matter/energy may be identical to dark
> energy.
>
> I think dark energy has negative pressure (tension,
> basically), but not
> negative energy--see section 6 of the article at
> http://tinyurl.com/8kepb ,
> the one titled "Negative Pressure". But the "Casimir
> effect" that pulls two
> parallel plates together (see
> http://tinyurl.com/anoky ) might qualify as
> negative energy--at least, the energy density
> between the plates is lower
> than the energy of the ground state of the quantum
> vacuum, but whether this
> would actually have the same effect as "negative
> energy" in GR is probably
> something physicists can't be sure of without a
> theory of quantum gravity.
>
> Here's an article on negative mass/energy, and its
> relevance to keeping
> wormholes open in GR:
>
>
http://www.physics.hku.hk/~tboyce/sf/topics/wormhole/wormhole.html
>
> Jesse
>
>
>
Received on Thu Oct 06 2005 - 18:13:58 PDT