Does the vacuum of space have a detectable mass?

I'm thinking to some extent in terms of both "dark matter", and the nineteenth century concept of the "aether", the idea that there exists matter of some type that cannot be readily detected in much of space, but which may interact with gravitational forces. Is there any kind of experiment one could do to evaluate whether the vacuum of space has a detectable mass? If so, could one then attempt to analyze and break down and manipulate this matter, perhaps using particle accelerators?

What if Randolph Churchill had murdered W.A. Harriman in June, 1941?

In April 1942, Randolph Churchill, the spoiled, tempestuous son of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, arrived home on leave in London from his job as an information officer in Cairo, Egypt. He had become gradually estranged from his wife Pamela over the previous year, and this had become clear in their correspondence. What Randolph had not expected, was that Pamela would be living openly with the manager of the American lend-lease program to Britain, Britain's life-line to billions of dollars in essential American military aid, W.A. Harriman. Harriman was the spoiled, millionaire playboy son of Railroad robber baron E.H. Harriman. In some ways, Randolph Churchill and Harriman had a good deal in common, but, Randolph certainly had not been aware up to this point that they also had Pamela in common. Needless, to say, Randolph was not pleased. He fumed that he and his wife had been pimped out to the Americans by his father in return for American military aid, and demanded that the relationship be terminated or he would say as much to the British and American media. What is particularly interesting about this relationship, is that W.A. Harriman had been sent by Prime Minister Churchill to Cairo Egypt in June, 1941 as his personal envoy to oversee and critique British military preparedness in Africa and the Middle East, and Randolph Churchill was his personal escort while he was in Cairo. Winston Churchill had told his son to befriend Harriman, and, Randolph dutifully complied. Now, it seems pretty clear that Randolph certainly did not know about Harriman's ongoing relationship with his wife in June 1941. It also seems rather likely that he would have been much, much less cooperative, if he had. Suppose, somehow, unbeknownst to his father, Randolph had gotten wind of the relationship? Certainly, Harriman's daughter knew about it, she was living in a cottage with Pamela, and sometimes the three of them together. Randolph's sisters suspected it. So, let's just suppose one or the other of them gives Randolph a little hint, unbeknownst to his father Winston, or to Harriman himself. What would have happened? So, Randolph has his father pimping him and his wife out to an oily, slimy rich playboy American, and he's supposed to grovel at his feet for American aid. I don't think so! I think, under these circumstances, Randolph may simply have had enough. He's going to confront Harriman, and they're going to get into a physical confrontation. Maybe one or the other will reach for Randolph's sidearm, and, BANG!, Harriman is dead. What happens next? Well, I think this might be the end of the American lend-lease program. After all, when the son of the British Prime Minister murders the head of the American program for aid to Britain, this has a very negative effect on American and Congressional opinion in the matter. Most Americans didn't see any need to get involved in the European war anyway. This would simply confirm their opinion that Europeans were all crazy and they were better off without them. And, bear in mind, Hitler is about to invade Russia. And American lend-lease, negotiated by Harriman was also essential to the Russians winning their own war against Hitler. So, so much for that! Furthermore, with no lend-lease programs to Russian or Britain, Hitler has no reason whatsoever to declare war on the U.S. after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. declares war on Japan alone, and Hitler is left unmolested. So, could this have been the hand of fate, the bolt out of the blue, that won the war for Adolf Hitler?

Observations on Relativity

I think, perhaps, in an effort to make my basic points, I am oversimplifying a little. Bear in mind, it's very much in the interest of bureaucracies to appear omniscient, and that includes in their understanding of science. Galileo Galilei, as you may be aware, completely rejected the concept of theory, all theory, for precisely this reason. Galileo was an empiricist, and like all true empiricists, he saw theory as an obstacle to the perception of truth. The Holy Inquisition, however, was aware, that data alone were no basis at all for control, or political power. Galileo was not condemned for supporting Copernicus, but for failing to develop a meaningful theory of the Universe to explain the Copernican doctrine. Galileo did not develop what Isaac Newton did, a full explanation of astronomical phenomena. Similarly, I would argue that the mere concept that Einstein's theories can explain everything is extremely useful to academics, or people in power in general, to give them confidence in exerting power and control. Hence, there will be a tendency to select data to support the theory, and ignore data that opposes the theory, and ignore any potential confounds that might tend to discredit the data, or the experiments involved. Whether this is brainwashing, doublethink, lying or simply self-interest is open to discussion. With regard to the GPS data that gravity has very small effects on atomic clocks, I would argue that this need not, at all, prove effects on time. Merely on the effects of the clock mechanisms themselves. With regard to the fact that particle accelerators cannot accelerate particles to faster than the speed of light, I would argue that this is simply because the particles themselves used to perform the acceleration themselves cannot go faster than the speed of light. The Parker Solar probe should currently be showing time dilation of several seconds a year according to the Lorentz Factor, but, no one seems to be able to show the detailed data from NASA proving this important fact. So, I tend to reject the Special Theory of Relativity.

Challenge: Establish a Jewish State in Palestine in the twentieth century without the Holocaust

While the 1917 Balfour Declaration favored a "jewish homeland" in Palestine, this was a far cry from a genuine Jewish State, self-sufficient, with a strong military and capacity for self-defense. This was one of the reasons that most jews worldwide were hostile to Zionism. It sounded like Jews going to a voluntary Ghetto, just the opposite of freedom. Aggressive Zionists, of course, were willing to work within this limited framework for a time, realizing that they could, and ultimately did, use terrorist methods to evict the British, and get a Jewish State in Palestine on their own terms. However, most jews worldwide didn't really see much need even for a full-fledged Jewish State, military and all, until Hitler's extermination campaign in the 1940's. What for, exactly? Jews felt reasonably happy, tolerated and comfortable in the U.S. and Europe. Why rock the boat? Who knows, maybe they'd all be deported to this new "Jewish Homeland" in the middle of the desert, surrounded by hostile Arabs. However, once Hitler gave Jews the choice, defend yourselves or die, a powerful State, ever ready to defend them, started looking very attractive indeed! And, it still does. So, is there any way to motivate Jews worldwide to establish a Jewish State in Palestine, without the Holocaust? Thoughts?

What if Adolf Hitler had lived to see the foundation of the State of Israel?

So, let's suppose Hanna Reitsch succeeds in flying Adolf Hitler out of his bunker in Berlin, to some extent as planned, and he hops a U-boat to Argentina. By no means impossible. Hanna was, after all, an awesome pilot. Hitler only has to live another 3 years to see the State of Israel come into being in 1948, he would only have been 59 when Israel was born, so, why not? His health wasn't good, but, once out of Germany he probably would have gotten away from most of the total doctor quacks who were killing him, so, he could well have lived much longer. How does Hitler react to the founding of the State of Israel? We can get a hint of this by how both Hitler and Goebbels reacted to the impending Soviet victory in 1945. Suddenly, the Slavs weren't untermenschen anymore, but, were superior to the Germans. Hitler had somehow, personally, transformed them into supermen. The Right makes Might philosophy of the Nazis could well be interpreted in this fashion. Indeed, most people do acknowledge that without Hitler and the Holocaust, there would not be any State of Israel, today. Prior to the Holocaust, most Jews worldwide were strongly anti-Zionist, they saw the Zionists as troublemakers. Why create a Jewish State that Jews could simply be deported to? Who needed it? What for? It would be ridiculous to call Hitler the Jewish Messiah, of course, as it would be ridiculous to call Ramses the Messiah of the Exodus from Egypt. Nevertheless, if Ramses had been kind to the Jews of Egypt, there would have been no Exodus, and no Promised Land of Israel, at all. The Jews would then have been perfectly happy to stay in Egypt, of course. I suspect Hitler would have been rather proud to have brought about the founding of the State of Israel. And, he almost certainly did, of course. After all, all Hitler really wanted was to be a Great Man, to have a place in history. And, effectively, Hitler is indeed the man who brought the Jews back to the Promised Land. Good for him!

Shouldn't the curvature of space-time have effects on the Doppler effect for sound waves?

Sound is a mechanical wave-form, with its speed determined by the properties of the media it travels in -- air, water etc. Light is a relativistic wave-form, with its speed determined by the light speed limitation and the curvature of space-time. The Doppler effect applies to both. This is the equation for the Doppler effect for sound. fo = ((v + vo)/(v + vs))fs where fo is the perceived sound frequency for the observer, vo is the speed of the observer, vs is the speed of the source of the sound, and fs is the actual frequency of the sound. The formula for the Doppler effect for light is ν′ = ν[(1 - (v/c)]/√[1 - (v/c)2] Sound travels in air at 340 m/s. Sound travels in water at 1500 m/s. Shouldn't this very substantial difference in the speed result in a small but measurable -- with atomic clocks anyway -- difference in the size of the Doppler effect for sound in air and water, that would result in a measurable departure from the basic Doppler effect for sound? That is, shouldn't the Doppler effect for light apply, as well as the Doppler effect for sound, and shouldn't the difference be rather greater for sound in water, than for sound in air? Has this experiment ever been done? If not, shouldn't it be done?

Could contemporary concepts of "dark matter" and "quantum soup" effectively serve the function of the nineteenth century physics concept of "aether"?

One of the most attractive and appealing aspects of Einstein's concept of the curvature of space-time and Special Relativity, was that it allowed physicists to dispense with the nineteenth century concept of "aether" in space, a kind of medium in a vacuum, that allowed light particles to traverse space in wave form. I was just wondering if the new concepts of "dark matter" and "quantum soup" in the apparent vacuum of space might allow us to reintroduce the concept of "aether" in space, and dispense with space-time curvature, and Special Relativity? Don't like that idea much, do you?

What if the Big Bang Theory of the Universe had been fully developed before Albert Einstein?

Albert Einstein was a terrific salesman! He single-handedly founded and raised the money to build the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. His letter to President Franklin Roosevelt got the ball rolling on nuclear weapons and led to the development of the first A-bomb. And, of course, his Theory of Relativity is the gold standard for scientific theories, the entire basis for the credibility of the field of physics, and, to some extent, of professional science in general. The Big Bang Theory of the Universe was developed at about the same time as Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and, since the 1960's, it has been pretty much accepted that the evidence for it is overwhelming. Clearly, the Universe started out as a "singularity", an enormous mass concentrated into an incredibly small physical space. And, suddenly, this enormous mass -- incorporating the matter for all the Black Holes, and everything else, in our current universe -- exploded at speeds probably far greater than the speed of light. Now, the question is, since Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is quite explicit that nothing can go faster than light, how is this possible? Indeed, since the matter in this original "singularity" was far more massive than any Black Hole currently in existence -- and since Relativity makes it quite explicit that nothing can happen in a Black Hole, because its gravity is too high for light photons to move at all, so time "stops" -- really, the initial Big Bang should never have happened! Nothing, should ever have happened, according the Relativity theory, given this initial "singularity". So, effectively, the Big Bang and Relativity Theory are totally at odds with each other. Physicists hand wave about this -- 'the initial "singularity" wasn't the "same" as a Black Hole singularity', 'Relativity Theory didn't apply to the early Universe', 'We haven't worked out the mathematics of the early universe yet' -- but, effectively the Big Bang and Relativity are totally contradictory. Absolutely and completely. So, what if the Big Bang theory had been fully developed and accepted prior to Albert Einstein and his sales genius coming on the scene? Could even Einstein's sales genius have been sufficient to persuade people of Relativity's validity, given a well accepted model of the entire universe that was totally inconsistent with it? I doubt it. The totally confounded evidence used to support Relativity Theory -- the fact that gravity has extremely small effects on atomic clocks, and that particle accelerator particles that can't go faster than light, can't propel particles faster than light -- would simply have been ignored. The scientific bureaucratic disinformation mills like the Nobel Prize Committees that support Relativity theory would have realized the pointlessness of even attempting to support this silly theory. And, by this time, we'd be using H-bombs to propel human beings to colonies on earth-like planets in other solar systems, at speeds tens of times the speed of light.

Could the Big Bang Theory of the origin of the Universe have been developed without Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity?

I realize that Einstein's field equations from General Relavity have been fundamental to developing the model of the expanding universe from the hypothetical Big Bang. However, is the notion that Space and Time are related essential to this? Couldn't gravity affect light just as General Relativity predicts, without light necessarily constraining time? In any case, could the Big Bang Theory of the origin of the Universe simply have been developed without Einstein at all, on the basis of other evidence?

What if the Nazis hadn't invaded Czechoslovakia in March, 1939?

The Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in March, 1939 -- explicitly forbidden by the Munich agreement of 1938 with Britain and France -- was really the last straw in determining that Hitler was simply too dangerous to be negotiated with seriously, or trusted at all, about anything. While the remains of Czechoslovakia were certainly no threat to Hitler, its resources and arms were potentially very useful to Germany's arms program and economic development. To some extent, Neville Chamberlain had seen the Munich agreement of 1938 as a test for Hitler, to see if it was at all possible to do business with him, or he would simply act like a pirate and a thief every chance that he got. He failed the test, and from that point, Britain saw Hitler as an enemy who had to be destroyed. So what would have happened if Hitler had simply refrained from invading Czechoslovakia? The fact is, the Munich agreement had left Czechoslovakia so unstable that it's quite possible that it would have collapsed into Civil War sometime into 1939 anyway, and that German intervention would have been required and requested by the international community, as a whole. Under such circumstances, the Munich agreement wouldn't have been violated, and Britain and France would have seen Germany as a responsible member of the international community. Or, even if the Czechs managed to survive, they would have been compelled to remain a close ally of Germany. In either case, it might have been possible for Hitler to pursue his Lebensraum agenda to the East. After all, the British had no more love for Stalin than they had for Hitler. If Hitler proves more amenable, why not support Hitler, in his plans for the conquest of Soviet Russia, what's the risk for Britain? Likely, this would have effectively moderated or eliminated Hitler's antisemitic agenda, since Hitler would have been being supported by the great Western bankers and capitalists in his desired crusade against Communism, the Red Menace. Now, the problem remains, how exactly can Hitler conquer the Soviet Union? Hitler appears to have been emulating the Mongolian Golden Horde in the thirteenth century, or perhaps Tamerlane the Great in the fourteenth century. The problem is, the Russian population had increased some twenty fold since that time, so their conquest was a correspondingly more difficult proposition. Even with the limited backing of the British Empire, and even alliances with Czechoslovakia and Poland, perhaps, it's not clear that Germany has much of chance to really conquer and colonize Stalin's vast empire. To some extent, his OTL approach of simply stealing whatever he could get to build arms as quickly as possible, to steal as much more as he could get, might have been the optimal, if ultimately unsuccessful, method. Or, is there some combination of alliances Hitler can develop, if he behaves himself, that will allow him to conquer all, or some of the Soviet Union?

The overpopulation problems of Central Africa should be solved by traditional methods

Environmentalists rightly decry overpopulation as the fundamental issue causing the mass extinction of species worldwide, and destroying the environment in general. And, they are correct. However, there is a solution to our problems at hand. And it is so very obvious. God himself is telling us the solution to our problems, in so many ways. It is in Central Africa that intolerable fertility rates have been sustained, and it is Central Africa that is fueling the world's population crisis. But, it is from the great traditions of Central Africa itself that the solution can be found. How did African man in the jungles sustain himself, given the near impossibility of hunting wild animals in dense jungles with spears and arrows? How did the African acquire sufficient fresh meat and high quality animal protein to survive? Let me put it this way, my friends. There's a reason that Hollywood chose Edward G. Robinson and Charleton Heston -- the co-stars of Cecil B. Demille's classic Hollywood Epic "The Ten Commandments" -- to reprise their great partnership some twenty years later in their pursuit of the new Promised Land of God. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green There's a reason, that Communist China's great leader Xi Jinping and Pope Francis, the leader of the world largest fully unified religion, the Roman Catholic Church, are together united in demanding their followers to have more children. Because God is telling us something, my friends. What is the central act of the Christian Church, and the central function of all Christian Church services? The eating of the Body of Christ! The sacred Holy Communion, the Last Supper. God is telling us something my friends, and we must listen. It is this, precisely: Be fruitful, and multiply, And nourish thyself with the fruits of thine own womb! No doubt, the wise people of Central Africa are following this policy as we speak! That's why they have so many children, they simply haven't anything else to eat. They must create great Temples and Pyramids like the ancient Aztecs of old, to perform ritual Holy Sacrifice of their infants, drinking their blood like fine wine, and consuming their entrails as the most exquisite of delicacies! Indeed, I presume that's why Mexicans have so many children to this very day! Give me that old-time religion Give me that old-time religion Give me that old-time religion It's good enough for me!

What if Charles Darwin had publicly and systematically denounced racism?

Darwin's theory of natural selection is not intrinsically, or conceptually, very different from ideas of selective breeding that are certainly at least as old as the Neolithic Age, some 10,000 years ago or more, with the conscious and artificial development of the modern cereal grains such as wheat, oats and corn. Effectively, Natural Selection is a notion that favors adaptability and flexibility, with regard to natural conditions, as a means of promoting survival, and indicates that these qualities are passed on through generations of all living organisms. Thus, it would tend to indicate that cross-breeding, and species diversity would, in general be optimal for maximizing the probability of species survival. Effectively then, Natural Selection would tend to argue that racial diversity and interbreeding of races, rather than "racial purity", or inbreeding. would represent the optimal strategies for the survival of the human species. Nevertheless, in "The Descent of Man", Darwin is really rather coy on this subject. He seems to clearly distinguish "savage" from "civilized" races, and implies that Natural Selection can, and should, favor the civilized races, like the British. Now, why exactly did he do this, you ask? And, that is rather a good question. I think the fundamental point here is that scientists are salesmen. The modern scientific method is a very public process, by definition it makes publication and public criticism and discussion a fundamental aspect involved in the evaluation of scientific theory and experimentation. Hence, if views are not popular and marketable with the scientific public, they will not be accepted as "true", whether they are true, or not. Conversely, if scientific publications are indeed popular, they may indeed be accepted as "true", even if they are clearly false by any meaningful objective criterion. Darwin was writing at the period of the peak of British and European Colonialism and Imperialism, it was absolutely fundamental to the government and the economy that control and exploitation of "inferior races" should be rationalized and justified. Hence, there was a tendency for the powers that be to tend to rather simplify the concepts of natural selection to the notion that "We are the fittest, hence we should survive, and everyone else must die!" Now, Charles Darwin could have publicly opposed these views, however, he never really did, to any significant extent, anyway. And, if he had, he might actually have gotten into trouble, because anti-racist views would have been very unpopular indeed in nineteenth century Britain, for obvious practical reasons. Scientists are salesmen, Darwin was a salesman, and a good salesman never intentionally antagonizes someone who is purchasing his products, does he? Probably, Adolf Hitler, was the most extreme exponent of Social Darwinism, holding that racial purity was the only true good, and that all impure, "international races", like the Gypsies and the Jews, had to be exterminated, for the good of mankind. And, he did just that! Adolf Hitler's one true love was his half-niece, Geli Raubal. He wanted to marry her, but, she committed suicide out of pique, when he paid too much attention to Eva Braun. Suppose Hitler does indeed marry Geli, thus maintaining "racial purity", and, because of inbreeding, his children are retarded, hemophiliac etc. Would Hitler have gotten the message, that, maybe the Jews and Gypsies had been right all along? It's quite possible. So, suppose Charles Darwin does his duty, tells the truth, doesn't act like a cynical salesman, and actually denounces, publicly and repeatedly, imperialistic racism as being contrary to sound principles of natural selection? How might this have changed history?

What if Adolf Hitler hadn't been antisemitic?

Hitler certainly had a quite a number of bees in his bonnet, as they say, but, perhaps the most bizarre was his extreme antisemitism. Personally, I think Hitler was anti-monotheistic, more than antisemitic. However, he couldn't very well tell the German people that he was anti-Christian, and expect anyone to take him seriously. Hitler's horrific experiences in World War One convinced him there was no God. There was only fate, survival, and the Human Will. Hence, all belief in an all powerful deity was delusion and weakness, and should be ruthlessly suppressed. His beliefs were a throwback to polytheism, where multiple, whimsical Gods toyed with mankind for their own amusement, in unpredictable ways. Hence, he saw the exploitation and destruction of other nations as a natural, ethical and inevitable aspect of human behavior, and the normal route to human success and prosperity. Effectively, then, I'm not really sure that extreme antisemitism was absolutely essential to his program, or his psychological makeup. So, let's suppose that aspect of Hitler's program is absent. He still wants lebensraum for the German people, he still hates the Bolsheviks, he still wants to overrun Europe and anyone in his way. But, he doesn't particularly give a damn about Jews, one way, or the other. In other words, although Hitler himself said "if the Jews hadn't existed, I would have had to invent them", I'm not really sure that's true at all. He could still have pretty much been Hitler, without the rabid antisemitism. And, actually, I think, other than the Jewish Holocaust, everything else could have been about the same. He still comes to power, engages in massive deficit spending to rapidly rearm, absorbs Austria and Czechoslovakia, invades Poland, conquers France, invades Russia, and, ultimately is destroyed, for overreaching, and antagonizing too many powerful world leaders. Thoughts?

What if a solar flare big enough to cause the 1859 Carrington Event occurred every decade?

The Carrington Event of 1859 was the largest geomagnetic storm in recorded history, caused by an intense solar flare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event It caused auroras, and the destruction of Telegraph lines. Suppose that solar flares as big as the one that caused the 1859 Carrington Event occurred every decade, regularly. What effects would this have on science and technology?

What if the 1859 Carrington Event had occurred 100 years later?

The Carrington Event of 1859 was the largest geomagnetic storm in recorded history, caused by an intense solar flare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event It caused auroras, and the destruction of Telegraph lines. What would have happened, if a comparably intense solar flare had caused a comparably intense geomagnetic storms 100 years later, in 1959? Most of the industrialized world is highly electrified, although the field of electronics is still in its infancy. The transistor had only been invented 12 years earlier, there are transistors being used in large mainframe computers, and microchips are in the process of development for the Minuteman I nuclear tipped missile, for the U.S. Air Force, but no microchip based missile guidance systems have been tested in missiles yet. However, electricity is very widely in use in the U.S., Europe, Japan and Australia. And, even in the less developed world, we have a wide range of electrical applications in the major cities. So, we have radio, television, telephones, electric starters and spark plugs in automobiles, electrical sensors and controls in nuclear power plants, in airplanes, in ships at sea, and electric lighting is a virtual universal in any developed part of the world. There are only a couple of satellites in orbit at this time, of no great practical significance, so, space technology is not yet an issue. The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are at daggers drawn during the cold war, and electrical/electronic radar systems are essential to defense against the new ballistic missile systems carrying nuclear weapons, and attack by nuclear armed bombers like the B-52. So, what happens exactly, if the Carrington Event occurs under these conditions? Is nuclear war likely? How much damage is done to the major industrialized nations, compared to the less developed world? Does this event tend to even out the discrepancies between the Industrialized World, and the less developed nations that don't have as much dependency on electric power? What effects does this event have on future developments in science and technology?