Some fascinating discussions on another thread about the speed of light vs. the speed of gravity waves made me think of some interesting information about "anomalous science" which baffle physicists because things are being observed that cannot be explained by the Standard Model of Physics.
I'll list some of them below and leave it up to those who have an interest to check them out if they'd like.
- The Casimir Effect- This is a small attractive force that acts between two close parallel uncharged conducting plates. It is due to quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. The effect was predicted by the Dutch physicist Hendrick Casimir in 1948. What happened was that when two very flat plates of certain metals are placed precisely opposite each other and the distance between them closed, at some point when the gap is below the sub-millimeter width a small but measureable repulsive force occurs between the plates, pushing them apart. There is some speculation this is because some form of energy is being "interfered with" by cancelling the wave form, causing the naturally repulsive force of the universe (aka Cosmic Constant) to push the plates apart. Since the quantum wavelength of gravity is unknown (if there is one) one can only speculate on why this happens.
-Gravity can be neutralized above superconducting disk spinning in an electromagnetic field. A Russian scientist constructed an experiment where a disc of a superconducting material (ceramic?) was levitated using powerful magnetic fields and then caused the disk to spin within that field. An object was placed above the spinning disk and it's mass/density was measured using radiant examination (laser or RF frequency). The mass of the object above the spinning disk was observed to lose 2% of it's weight (mass) which could be interpreted as an indication that the field created by the spinning disk reduced the force of gravity above it by 2%.
Spooky action at a distance (SAAD)- Einstein discovered that if two particles are entangled (such as splitting a single photon into two) whenever the polarity of one of the photons that was split is measured, the other's polarity is identical when measured. To the limits of measurable science, (so far about two kilometers) whenever this is done, the result is 100% consistent. The polarity always matches and when they are both measured at the same time, they still match. This implies that the "communication" of their quantum state in instantaneous. In fact, it is so fast that the last calculation done as to how fast it had to be for the two entangled particles to "communicate" across space, was roughly 1000 times the speed of light. Of course, this is just the observation. It is also possible that the speed of light (aka "C") is preserved and that what is being observed is a phenomenon related to some unknown quality of connection between the particles that is never broken even when they are split, so their state is not actually "communicated" at all.
Quantum teleportation - Quantum teleportation is a process by which quantum information (e.g. the exact state of an atom or photon) can be transmitted (exactly, in principle) from one location to another, with the help of classical communication and previously shared quantum entanglement between the sending and receiving location. I am not extremely comfortable with this concept, but the basic idea seems to be connected to SAAD. Even though the physics of WHY this happens is completely unknown, it is a 100% reproducible phenomenon which is the theoretical basis for the idea of a quantum computer. Theoretically a quantum computer might be so fast that the "answer" to any question posed would be arrived at too fast to be measured by our science.
The whole significance of these things in the context of this post is to call attention to the fact that we already are confronted by observations of physics which cannot be explained by the Standard Model, so they are in essence "small miracles" because they can be made to happen, but there is no explanation of how they happen. This means that until we know why they happen, they must represent the fact that the Standard Model, including "C" can not be viewed as an absolute, but only a very strongly-supported theory.
Gravity force is known to travel as a wave, but its quantum (particle form, if any) is 100% unknown, which means that until it IS known, Gravity will be one of the Last Big Mysteries of science and physics.
There are other "miracles" of the world which occur in conjunction with consciousness. Many of us have experienced such things first hand in what CG Jung called "synchronicities". An example of this would be if say, one is thinking about an old friend one hasn't spoken with or talked about in years, then a few minutes later, the phone rings and that person is on the phone. These "little miracles" happen thousands of times a day and have probably happened to just about everyone alive at some point (though many may have forgotten the incidents). I try to document when the ones that happen to me occur, so that I don't forget.
CG Jung used these incidents as evidence of what he called the "Collective Unconscious".
Another examples of a documented occurrence of a "miracle" involving consciousness was with Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. He was hosting a dinner party in Sweden with numerous very credible, respectable guests in attendance. At one point he felt fatigued, excused himself and went to lie down. He reported that he fell asleep and had a very lucid dream of a horrendous conflagration - an entire city on fire. When he awoke, it was so vivid that he wrote down many of the details of what he had seen and reported this to his guests. He was very upset and many of the guests wished him well as they left, concerned for his health.
Later, it was discovered that at the precise time he had these dreams a real fire had taken place in a large town hundreds of miles away which matched his dream observations precisely. Shaken, he dispatched someone to check on the addresses that he remembered from the dream and discovered that every detail he had dreamed turned out to be correct. The buildings he saw destroyed were burned down, and some he saw saved, were untouched. The dream had been so accurate that local law enforcement detained and questioned him as a possible suspect in arson, until the others at the dinner corroborated his story.
There is book which discusses these things from a scientific POV, co-written by a physicist and another author who assembled a long list of similar odd "miracles" which cannot be explained by conventional science. The book is called, "The Holographic Universe" by Talbut/Bohm.
Another useful book in examining things like transdimentional physics and phenomena outside the standard model is titled, "Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku (yeah, he retired from science and became a pop-star, but he was still a scientist when he wrote this). This is a good primer for those who want to try to get a conceptual grasp of the issues involved in N-Dimensional physics outside the Standard Model and how we will likely discover those things from an experimental POV. Strangely it is already outdated in some ways, because the Higgs Particle had not been discovered yet.
