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sassooda · 3 years ago

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Worlds Away JJK AU / Chapter 24 - These Four Walls 🔞

w/c -6,406

Naoya finds himself unable to sleep despite feeling the comfort of her next to him after their bath. As he shifts to sit himself up in the bed, her body subconsciously adjusts around him before laying her head lower along his abdomen. He’s ensnared by his own anxiety as he watches her sleep. Lies are not something he wants to start off with but how does he explain his plan to her? The pressure weighs on him as he claims to care about her. How does he tell her that he needs Getou alive in order to help him deal with Gojo?

The strategy was always to bring the Zenin clan back as leaders and she’s been engraved into this for years now, way before they ever actually met. His only focus then was to fulfil what he was taught was his destiny. He received the ancient technique along with the traditionally inherited ones but they kept this a secret in fear of the Gojo clan retaliation. They wanted to at least strengthen Naoya, let him grow older, stronger, more resilient…things that would be necessary if he were to ever stand a chance against Satoru. It was not thought to be below Gojo to nonchalantly kill a possible threat back then, child or not. He was truly something else.

The Zenin ancient technique is the manipulation of scalar warfare via scalar energy waves. This energy naturally exists amongst us but it travels completely differently than sound or visible light…much faster too. He can summon great amounts of energy and direct it to a coordinated location from any distance and with almost complete accuracy, he’s yet to fully master that part. With the energy traveling faster than the speed of light its an almost guaranteed win even if you don’t factor in how devastating the impact is. He’s not even informed Choso of this although he wishes he could now openly as his thoughts travel to alternatives.

His left hand finds itself wrapping around her shoulder as she peacefully dreams. His fingers fumble with the loose cut off shirt that Choso let him borrow for her. He really should have thought about clothes. He looks down and lightly brushes his fingers along her shoulder blade and back while he sighs to her perfection. “You really messed my entire world up…” He whispers with a smile, knowing that he’s more than happy for it. He still thinks it’s better to be rid of Gojo for sure, he doesn’t really trust him with her or as a shaman in general. What he doesn’t want is for her to hate him because of it though and he knows that’s likely, even more so if he keeps these facts from her.

His eyes take to their surroundings. ‘These four walls…’ He despises keeping her locked in here, a room without windows, living a life without freedom. The horrific indention in the floor from where Getou attacked her ends up being where his vision travels next and he feels as if he could scream in frustration. They’ve since cleaned the blood but it doesn’t matter, the memory stains his mind. He looks to the tub next, probably trying to ease his thoughts but he can’t help but notice the pink ring around the inside from where there’s still some bloody residue. They never cleaned their legs before getting in the first time together so inadvertently, the ring formed. ‘I need to wash that…’

She stirs beside him and nuzzles her head into him further after bringing her left arm across his hips. His mood improves, causing him to beam as he reaches for the now dark grey covers to pull them over her more. The silver sheets were ruined after the first night as well from where they laid down right after she was healed. He wonders if there’s even the slightest chance that he can spare Gojo and him not be a problem. The original plan would probably be easier but he just can’t bring himself to hurt him knowing it would hurt her in return. Toji hasn’t even entered his train of thought before now and he sinks a bit knowing Toji wants her as well. “What the fuck am I supposed to do?” Naoya’s certainly not going to back down, especially if she wants him in her life but he’s also not aligned with the idea of fighting Toji, he admires and respects him far too deeply.

He glances around the room again and comes to the odd realization that these four walls have also been a blessing in a way. Only here were they able to truly discover each other, his intentions finally understood by her. The words that left him and the actions he demonstrated always came out wrong before and this caused her to remain weary of him for quite some time. He thinks back to the first night when he let it slip that he loves her and how understanding her reaction was. ‘There’s no way she could have known…’ Understanding that he has a lot to learn about her still, he brushes the suspicion away. He takes his right hand and grabs her left one that’s thrown over him, bringing it to lie on his chest. He sighs as he debates further about how he should move forward.

Truly, the one thing he wants to ensure over everything now is Getou’s demise. ‘That fucker has it coming.’ He’s never heard Choso’s opinion exactly but he has a hunch that he’s with him as far as Getou is concerned. ‘What a sneaky business this is.’ That makes him think of Sukuna now and he wonders if worse came to worse…would he be able to nullify him as well? Naoya now feels like he’s seemingly against the world aside from Choso. His gut harbors a bad feeling about what’s to come, he can’t ignore it.

His grip on her hand became firm while he sorts through initiatives and he has to remind himself to relax again. Toji has been calling him nonstop and he’s purposefully disregarded this partially because he doesn’t want to tip off Getou but he’s also ashamed that Getou was able to rip out her wing…while he had her. If he does return Toji’s call, would he even be willing to talk? Would he be willing to help? Naoya finds it doubtful considering he reached out to him before and was shut down. ‘If it’s to get her out of here unharmed though…maybe he will be willing then.’ The more he ruminates over the obstacles he finds himself leaning against the original plan. He would rather her be safe over having Gojo taken out. He can’t prove it but he knows there’s something Getou’s hiding and he fears what that may turn out to be. Getou is closing in on him fast and Naoya’s understanding that there aren’t any limits or types of etiquette that Getou will follow so he has to remain sharp. Before Elska arrived, he planned on not hovering over like he has been in fear of how Getou would react…now he feels like he can’t leave her alone because of how Getou has acted.

As his left-hand trails over her back under the loose shirt, his fingernails lift a corner of her seal. She’s already unable to protect herself with cursed energy in here so he loathes her being without her wings as well. ‘Fuck it.’ He pinches the lifted corner and peels the talisman away. ‘She needs to be left with some form of defense just in case.’ Right in that moment, as he’s crumbling up the paper into a wadded ball, he comes to terms with the fact that he officially wants her out of there. “You deserve better…” he sighs deeply as he looks to the ceiling.

“But you’re not so bad…”

He jumps a bit from her sudden response and waits to see if she’s actually awake. His eyes are trained on her as he sees her open her own to look up at him. She smiles and sits up as if she’s going to leave the bed but she just repositions herself to lay against his chest in a semi upright position as well.

“Naoya?”

“Yes, princess?”

She giggles to the pet name as she knows she is probably the furthest thing from that. “What’s on your mind? You usually snore a bit…”

He’s caught off guard by this and lets out an abrupt “Ha!” as he found it pretty funny. “Do I now?” He dances his fingertips along her back to tickle her and she jolts awkwardly into him while they laugh.

“You do indeed…but it’s not loud, it’s actually kind of cute.” She smiles against him while she listens to his heartbeat and the way he fills and empties his lungs. ‘So wonderful…’ There’s a comfortable silence that washes over them but she asks again, “What’s bothering you though?” When he exhales sharply, she lifts herself up to face him. His eyes seem melancholy and heavy when he looks back to her and she can sense that he’s really worried about something. “Naoya, please…just tell me.”

“Elska,” He begins as he tries to uplift his demeanor, “This isn’t a good place for you, I was selfish when I thought it would be.” He glances down at her lap but can feel her eyes on him so he meets them. His hand is still around her left one so he squeezes it slightly and brings it to his lips. “I want to be with you but I have to take care of a lot of issues first.” He can now feel his worried expression as she raises a concerned eyebrow at him.

“I will help you with Getou.” The apprehension on her face fades to a determined one as she brings her right hand to run through his hair. He smiles to it but she can tell he was about to negate her words, he was clearly against the idea.

“He is why I have to get you out of here.” He’s watching her as she shifts to straddling him and he gulps down air as she finds her balance. “You still have no idea what he’s capable of…”

“I don’t want you around him either Naoya, he holds malice towards you.” She clicks her tongue, “I will slice him to ribbons if he even tries to harm you.” Her eyes began to glow at the end of her statement, reflecting the light off of Naoya’s fair complexion.

He wasn’t expecting her to say any of that, he finds her to be much more delicate than she maybe is. “Consideration of this matter is over, I will not allow you to fight him.” He feels like he sounded brutish or insensitive so he begins to reword it, “What I meant was…”

“I know you’re worried Naoya but you are not alone in this.” Her hands search his arms aimlessly before progressing, “I want to crush him for what he did to me in front of you. For the way he made you feel.” Her eyes are still glowing as her hatred forms inside. When she drank from him after Getou’s attack, she was able to feel every bit of sorrow he experienced…all of the guilt from the situation as well. “Why did you remove the seal if you weren’t wanting me to fight?”

“I want you to be able to defend yourself Elska… my stomach turns at the thought of something like that happening again. This is why you have to go.”

“Then you’re coming with me.” Her words felt strong as she stiffens her expression to stand against his reluctancy. “Regardless of how we do this, I’m not leaving without Itadori or you.”

He feels his chest become heavy with emotion as her words warm and chill him all the same. “I’m sure Gojo and Toji will be fine with that.” He scoffs to himself as he places a hand on his head and apologizes. “I didn’t mean it like that, I’m just…ughhh…”

She sees his vexation and doesn’t take offense, she knows better than to think he’s so blatantly rude, ‘He’s just upset…’ She sees him struggling to finish his meaning now being a little more flustered than before so she leans down and kisses him. The way it feels when he kisses her back is indescribably beautiful. As much as she doesn’t want to pull away, she does but only so she can bring his head to her chest. While resting her chin above him, she runs her fingers through his hair trying to help him find some reprieve. “Why is it so important that Getou lives Naoya? What purpose were you claiming he serves before?”

This was the part he was apprehensive about and he hesitates to speak as he’s already decided to tell her the truth, he just doesn’t want her to pull away. After a long sigh he wraps his arms around her and admits, “Well…it was to help me deal with Gojo.” He closes his eyes against her as he waits for the inevitable movement of her trying to be free of his grasp. She doesn’t budge though nor does she say anything so he thinks to continue, “That would mean keeping you here though…and I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’m going to try and talk with Toji to come up with a plan.” She moves now and pulls away but not as he expected.

She’s looking down into his eyes and knows that hurt is displayed on her face. “You were planning on killing Sati this entire time?” She thinks back to when he was sealed and wonders why they wouldn’t have done it then…also extremely grateful that they didn’t.

“The plan was to try…or at least seal him again.” His voice is dampened with regret but he’s glad he was able to be truthful.

“Naoya… you can’t!” She’s unsure how to think through this situation. Her heart has been split into three…three for Christ’s sake. ‘Nanami was right about us being completely dysfunctional.’ She feels the severity of the situation and is baffled by how she had no idea…Naoya doesn’t have that kind of taste at all.

“That’s not the design anymore,” He brings his right hand to cup her cheek and uses his thumb to wipe away her tear that was forming, “There’s no way I could go through with it now, I’m incapable of putting you through that Elska.” He sees her expression soften as she grabs his hand with her own. “Now with that being said, I can’t promise not to fight him…I may not have a choice.”

At first her brow furrows to this but she understands shortly afterwards that he’s meaning Satoru may attack him. “I will protect you Naoya, as you’ve done for me here… they just need to know that and it will be fine!” She almost rolls her eyes to her own statement as she nods to him to show she wasn’t actually that delusional. “I mean, we can try to explain at least…” Her eyes widen for a second as she darts her eyes back to him. “I actually don’t think Sati hates you at all Naoya… perhaps quite the opposite.”

He’s confused by this and is convinced that she’s making a joke so he smiles but the intensity in her eyes doesn’t diminish. “What do you mean by that?” He’s genuinely curious as he thinks about all of their interactions and how friendly they weren’t.

She stares blankly into the bed as she wonders to herself, ‘Yea how exactly should I explain this one? Would it be better not to?’ She’s nervously looking at him now as he patiently waits for clarification. “Not to bring up bad deeds but do you remember the time when you did have him sealed and I came searching for him?” Naoya grins immediately but then composes his face as he tries to pretend that he still doesn’t enjoy that memory. She returns a playful look to him and he bashfully shrugs his shoulders and says, “What? It was kind of hot before the almost dying part…” She blinks slowly to his response and looks away as she’s even more unsure now if she should clear this up or not. She wants to laugh but is somewhat concerned. ‘What are the fucking odds? Please God, no… I don’t think I could handle him too…’

“What is it? Was that weird and not funny?” Naoya felt the disconnection in the conversation after he spoke and worries that he was far too comfortable with her.

She looks back to him with caution, “He felt the same.” She shoves Naoya’s chest so he falls down against the pillows, “You two are such perverts!”

She laughs as he gathers she’s not bothered and belts out high-pitched chuckles as he’s forms, “Are you saying he really wasn’t ready to kill me?!” He’s in disbelief as she’s still giggling above him.

“No and I really don’t think he hates you Naoya...I can’t tell you exactly what he feels but it’s not hatred.” Both of her hands are on his chest now as their voices fill the room. “Don’t get any bright ideas though, he does NOT need encouragement in that realm.”

He sits up slightly and is wondering if he’s over thinking her statement but asks anyways, “Has he tried to make that happen?” He feels her tense up a bit. “Elska?”

“This is why I took a minute to speak, I feared it would lead to this…” She looks down at him as her eyes warn him of something he really doesn’t want knowledge of.

He sits up further as he adjusts his arms to hang off her waist, “I’m not going to like this I’m guessing…” She nods no and his mind begins to wander at who Gojo would have involved with them, ‘Surely she wouldn’t act this way if it were a random person…’ Then it hits him. His eyes grow wide with shock as he looks back up to her. “TOJI?”

She’s waiting for his disgust to become apparent and shifts her weight to her shins and knees to be prepared for him to want her to move off of him. “Yes…” Her eyes are fixed onto his abdomen as she savors the image fearing she may not be able to see him from this angle anymore, in this context. He doesn’t say anything but she hears him huff a couple of times. The anticipation of his rejection is killing her so she starts to climb off of him but he stops her.

“Where are you going?” He grabs her by the waist gently to anchor her back into his lap. She still doesn’t look at him but can tell she’s tearing up. “Don’t cry, it’s…not what I was expecting is all…I just needed to…internalize that.” He guides her chin back towards his direction. “It’s ok…I really just would never have seen that coming. Gojo seems way too greedy to me.” He tries to smile awkwardly as he hides his discontent of knowing him and Toji did that with her. There’s no doubt in his mind now though that it would’ve been Gojo’s idea as he thinks back to the day he was taking Elska from behind in front of him. “So THAT’S what that look was…” He sees her confusion and says, “Of course I did not want that image in my head but I’d rather be aware than dumb.” He wraps his arms a little bit tighter around her, “And Gojo gave me a look that day when I was…when we were…” He smiles widely, “I was expecting hateful eyes but they weren’t…and now that makes sense.” He laughs wholeheartedly as she finally smiles again. “I’m not so eager to share though,” He gives her a quick peck on the lips, “I just didn’t mind him having to watch.” He winks to her and growls into another kiss as he’s trying to encourage her to relax again.

She’s beyond relieved but still embarrassed about the topic of conversation. ‘I kind of asked for that one though.’ There’s no way for her to understand how his mind navigates these things as his reaction kind of surprises her. She can tell that he’s ruffled by it but he’s so genuinely calm over the matter as if he doesn’t see fit to place her with any blame. She definitely didn’t initiate it but she was still a participant.

They stare into each other for a brief moment before Naoya asks quietly, “So…did you…” He’s dragging his feet at this point, “…did you like it?”

She wishes she could hide under the covers or hold her breath underwater in the tub, anything to help her escape this question. She looks up to the ceiling and takes a deep breath as she can’t help but feel so strange having this discussion with Naoya while straddling his lap. “If I’m being honest…” His eyes are overflowing with a kind of curiosity, “I think I could have if things had gone differently but overall, not really.” If it weren’t for Toji she might not have experienced much pleasure at all that night but doesn’t want to exactly hash out the details with Naoya.

“Hmm…” He leans his lips into her collar bone and drags his tongue to her neck before planting a deep and sensual kiss. He hears her breath shudder and smiles while biting his lip before pulling away. He’s not upset with that answer at all aside from the indication that one of the two at least caused her displeasure. “I will say that I don’t find Gojo to be the healthiest or best of influences and I just really hope he didn’t hurt you. I have faith in Toji but not him.” Despite learning this new information, he actually is overcome with relief. This is that small chance he was hoping for, a way to not have to harm Gojo in the process of everything. “If this is the case though then maybe him and I won’t fight after all…” He looks back up to her and feels goosebumps as she runs her nails along his scalp.

“Now that we have that figured out… it’s settled, we leave together.” She sees his face as he’s hesitant to promise such things. “If I catch wind that you try anything different, I will take matters into my own hands regarding Getou…do not try me.”

He’s not heard that tone from her before and felt the authority of her statement. He buries his face into her chest as he lets out a muffled and stressed noise “God damn it Elska, why won’t you just let me protect you?”

She’s trying to keep a straight face as he shakes his head slowly into her breasts, wanting him to know that she’s serious. “I am a warrior princess, ok? Granted I can’t really prove that since I can’t even summon energy here but I still have ways to harm.”

He chuckles to her words, ‘Warrior princess’ not in doubt but just adjusting to how feisty she can be. “There’s talismans in the walls.” He looks up to her now, feeling his heart skip a beat with how endearing her face is despite his words. “They had to be arranged a certain way but if you look closely along the wall by the tub,” he points in the direction as she turns her body to see, “There’s a small ‘x’ over there. Once I send my fist through that part of wall and remove one of the chaining talismans, they will all become unusable.” He smiles to her with pride as he truly thought most of this through. “If something happens, just do exactly that. I’d already have done it if we had another way to hide your presence…Getou would know immediately otherwise.”

“What if he notices the talisman from my wings missing?”

“He shouldn’t fucking be in here to see.” His eyes narrow instantly to the thought. ‘That’s not a bad point though and what if he uses a Titer?’ The uneasiness creeps back through him. “I’m going to try and go see Toji tomorrow though…but that means I won’t be here for a while.” He winces to his words. “I’ll ask Choso if he can come accompany you while I’m away. He was even thinking to bring Itadori over at some point if he could.”

“I would love to see him! He’s still doing well right?” It’s such weird situation, her and Itadori both being held prisoner by people that genuinely care about them. She almost can’t help but laugh outwardly at the vast strangeness of this all. “I’m glad he has a brother though and Choso seems very nice…although he’s also terrifying.”

“Choso is very powerful, that’s probably why. He’s capable of so many things too, I’m not even sure that I’m privy to all of his abilities.” He’s proud to say that, he knows his new friend is a damn good one to have on his side. “He’s a good guy though, I promise.” Their smiles meet each other and he sighs as he stares up at her, wanting to touch every part of her. He instead rests his hands on her thighs and attempts to save his sanity.

“I trust your judgement about him.” She feels his eyes roaming her discretely and smirks at how something as simple as that is enough to rile her up when it comes to him. He knows he’s been caught because he smiles slyly in response before pulling her down towards him, their tongues greeting each other. “Stop teasing me Zenin…”

“It’s rough, isn’t it?!” His cackles are deep and mixing into moans as they allow themselves a few moments of bliss. It doesn’t take but a couple of seconds before their panting and whining into each other’s mouths. His desire to have her races through him as he feels a moment of weakness and lifts his hips into her. Her gasp made his head spin as all of the blood his body holds seems to flood into his groin. “Baby…” One hand laces into her hair as he tilts her head back to tongue and nip her neck as he strains his own to sit up enough to do so. Her moan from his ministrations brings her submissiveness to the forefront of his mind and he can no longer deny the situation as he grows beneath her. He’s sure she can feel it, he’s not wearing pants and she’s not wearing any underwear. When he nudges his hips again, he can feel how wet she is and he sends his hand between her legs to conduct more. He still holds her hair loosely but has now made it to where their faces are inches apart. He sends one finger into her slowly and watches her expression as he glides it in. He pulls her down further to kiss him as he then sends in a second one. She whimpers into his lips and he feels like he’s going to burst.

His mind is screaming for them to stop, she could release her pheromones at any time. “Are you ok right now?” He breathlessly whispers in between their kissing. She doesn’t feel overheated nor are her eyes glowing but he wants to make sure. She says nothing but smiles and bites her bottom lip as she sends her own hand down between them to guide herself over him. He felt his eyes widen as he feels her wrap her fingers around his shaft. “Baby…wait…” but she doesn’t. Within seconds she’s slowly sinking into him, never stopping until he was completely seated inside of her. He moans loudly as he’s wanting her desperately but is also frustrated by the situation. She bends down completely and resumes kissing him while slowly rocking her hips, causing him to have to bend his knees so that he didn’t slip out…even though he knows he needs to stop this. “God damn it Elska…” He forces speech through gritted teeth as he wantonly glares at her unable to truly be angry but is still almost agitated. He wraps his hand back into her hair and tilts her chin up again. He kisses her jaw and places his left hand on her right thigh and grabs it roughly, not enough to hurt her but enough for her to know he’s kind of pissed off. She moans disapprovingly when she realizes she’s unable to ride him while he holds her thigh down and struggles to meet eyes with him as he’s still holding her head back.

“You’re going to make me do this and I will regret it when your pheromones release…” He thrusts into her once and she seductively whines. “I want you so fucking badly…” He thrusts into her a second time, only deeper and her cries fill the room as she’s unraveling above him. His hands release her hair and she sends her lips onto his without hesitation. He’s now grabbing both of her thighs as he feels his glare plastered onto his face. His hips push up into her again and she folds over completely on top of him. He hisses through his teeth and pumps her a few more times consecutively as she moans into his neck. “Why do you… do this to me?” He sounds angry and he honestly is but he’s still completely enthralled by them finally wrapping into each other like this again. It hadn’t been very long but he can’t stand to fight their feelings and desires. “You tell me when I need to stop Elska” He grunts as she moans into an agreeance, “Because I’m going to fuck you until you do.”

She lets her voice echo through the room as she just received ravishing verbal confirmation that he was going to give it to her…that which she needs from him. This dominating side of Naoya makes her feel euphoria already. He’s not exactly rough but he’s so passionate and genuine that she just wants to let him have his way with her. She has this belief that if she granted him that access, he would still do it with a level of delicacy. The way he feels to her is beyond words as she wishes she could relay her pleasure to him properly but as he ruts into her, she can only focus on the sensations. Making him mad wasn’t her intention but she finds it extremely difficult to fight off her urges and has to admit that angry lustful Naoya makes her feel even more like this was supposed to be. She sits herself up enough to hover over his face and the look he’s giving her can only be described as furrowed and alluring. “I’m sorry…Naoyaa” She whispers as he continues to send himself inside of her. Her breath is caught as she tries to control her volume but ends up gasping while she feels him repeatedly brush against the spot that has her losing her mind above him. She finds herself digging her nails into his shoulders being unaware until she reflexively curls her fingers and scratches his skin. She’s doing everything in her power to refrain from releasing them but feels it quickly approaching.

He’s learning her body more and more every day. He quickly became determined to make this as fast as possible, hoping they can reach the heights together but is prepared to have to stop at any given second. Her body has always been his guide, he feels like it’s as if she’s a language he can easily speak. As her eyes flutter above him while she’s contracting around him, he curses the day that anyone ever stands between them again. He’s surprised that they’ve been able to make it for this long without triggering the release but it seems like the moment he found solace in that he notices a slight trace of the scent. He immediately lifts her off of him so that he can remove the biggest contributing factor, himself.

He expects her to pout but she’s a smiling mess as she leans down to kiss him deeply. A throaty groan leaves him as he feels her arms to see if she’s physically hot. She’s warm but it could be from their activities. He’s lying flat with his hands now over his eyes as he tries to regulate his heart. “Baby…you can’t do that anym-…” He feels warmth engulfing his tip and sliding down his shaft. He whines as he thinks she’s climbed back over him but realizes that her weight isn’t there. ‘Wait…is she..?’ His eyes dart open to see her lids as she’s swallows him down. He feels excitement as she creates suction that results to a small popping noise as she raises her head up again. She’s bent over on the side of him with her backside high in the air, he can’t help but marvel at appealing sight.

“What can’t I do Naoya?” Her voice is slightly broken as she lowly whispers into him, her devious eyes meeting his as she catches her breath.

“I don’t believe I said anything.” He smirks as he moves to sit up more, wanting to witness this new first for them as he realizes why she was smiling after he pulled out. He grins too seeing how eager she is to do this. She drops her head back down and it sends his head upwards. He shifts his weight to one arm so he can reach out and touch her. Her eyes lock onto his as she hollows her cheeks and he feels himself inching closer. He tries to grab her hair to pull from her face but he fumbles with strands until she assists him. He doesn’t want to add pressure to her, he just wants to see. He’s moaning relentlessly now as she bobs over him, the sounds created from her sucking adding to his experience as he still can’t help but feel she’s absolutely stunning. He feels the tension rising within, the warmth from his own end, “B…baby…I’m about to…” She quickens her pace and he can’t do anything but sink back into the pillows while his body involuntarily flinches as he’s unloading all of his frustrations into her mouth. He whimpers as she slowly brings her lips back up and lets him flop onto his stomach. Through heaving he asks her if she finished at all and she shakes her head, “This wasn’t about me.” And smiles, “You feel really good regardless so don’t worry.” Her eyes are soft as they gloss over his body and she wipes her face clean.

As she collects air in the form of gasps, she looks back to Naoya who finally looks a little livelier and not so weighted down, “You needed that…” Her hand caresses his left thigh while she breathes heavily “…you were so stressed out and I know I’m the cause.” He’s motioning her to come closer so she crawls up towards him.

“You specifically do not stress me out.” He pulls her by the back of the head so he can kiss her deeply. He brings his fingers underneath her chin to lift her gaze up more towards him, “It’s actually everyone else.” They both breathlessly snicker as she curls back into him and lays her head on his heaving chest. They have to fight the covers underneath them before they can be pulled over top but once they do, they settle back into each other. “I do feel better though,” his heart threatens to leap from under his ribs as he realizes that was probably her intention all along. The smile painfully fixed to his face widens as he feels the actual love from a woman, from her. “Thank you...” He hums as he notices they’re in the same position as when she was sleeping but his heart feels bigger and the amount of anxiety he has about the days to come seems significantly smaller.

“I have no idea what awaits us outside of this room…” Reality is rearing it’s ugly head as she feels she must address this, “…but I can no longer ignore what you are to me Naoya.” The left hand she has placed on his chest balls up, “And I can’t ignore the fact that I’m with Sati either…and what we’ve been doing, how I can’t keep away from you….” She takes a deep breath as she calms the unsteady emotions that were rising within her. “And Toji…Toji is very dear to me. We’re bonded.” She wishes she would have remained silent, fearing that she just ruined the beautiful moment they were sharing. His hand rests over her fist now and she watches his hand fumble to open hers so their fingers can interlock.

“I was already aware of things being complicated princess, don’t work yourself up so much over that.” He brings her fingers to his lips to kiss them. “I’m certainly not thrilled with the predicament but I knew they both worked themselves into your life.” He brings his left hand to brush through her hair, “That’s why it was so important for you to know that you have a choice with me. I will not manipulate you.”

“I believe you when you say that.” She’s understanding exactly how many different ways he makes her feel amazing. “You really are a good man, Naoya…” It seems like no matter what the topic, they can strive through it all, like they’re indestructible together. “We’ve had an interesting past but there’s something about all of this, I need you in my future as well.” She lifts her head up to see him and he’s already looking down to her. She feels so insecure as his gaze seems so piercing looking over her while he’s lost in thought.

Just a week ago he was cloaked in distress worrying about if she would even really consider him, especially under these circumstances. Mere days ago, his heart fractured when he thought he was going to lose her for good after Getou’s vile attack. Minutes ago, they were direly experiencing each other and upon hearing her say all of that, in this exact moment he knew he was supposed to be with her.

“And I will be there.” He’s feeling so many different things that he doesn’t even know where begin. “Be in mine as well?” She smiles, nods and says yes to this and he can’t help but to reach out to her to bring her back into him. He’s now revamped and possibly even somewhat looking forward to his discussion tomorrow. Things definitely don’t seem as bleak as his relief from their honest exchanges allow him feel more at ease.

“Everything will work out.” He rubs her shoulder with a new armor of confidence, “And if not, we’ll fucking make it.”

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philliamwrites · 4 years ago

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Ocean Eyes, Golden Mind

Fandom: All For The Game (Nora Sakavic)

Pairing: Neil/Andrew

Tags: #math nerd neil, #neil with glasses, #no exy

Summary: In which Neil hates his new prescribed glasses until they attract the interest of a certain Andrew Minyard.

Commissioner: Ziegenkind

Notes: Title taken from Billie Eilish’s ‘Ocean Eyes.’

Ocean Eyes, Golden Mind

Dude, it’s just a frat party. Who doesn’t go to frat parties?

The message flashes Neil’s screen white, its sender none other than his roommate Nicky who is supposed to study for an upcoming test in Public Policy in exactly nineteen hours. That’s what Neil writes him. Nicky’s reply comes instantly.

Those who study tend not to party. You know. Like you.

Neil leaves him on read. If he wants to party, he’ll lock himself inside his room, two bottles of Jack Daniel’s by his side while watching every existing compilation of cats attacking people on the small screen of his phone. He knows how to have a good time, alright. Not everyone has to set their scale like Nicky: More than once Neil has been the spectator of him coming back to the dormitory completely wasted, but still eager enough to get frozen waffles from the fridge. Being too drunk to put them in the toaster, he usually just climbs up to his top bunk and puts them between his thighs to eat them partially defrosted. It’s this fragile line between genius and stupidity that has Neil doubting if he should fill in a request for changing roommates or just live with the fact that Nicky Hemmick is one special kind of man.

So instead of spending his night curled into himself, wall against his back and eyes on every stranger distributing awful shots, Neil sits at the Math Tutoring Centre on the west side of the campus and gives group tutoring sessions.

Math comes to Neil like breathing. Like Bertrand Russel said, not only does Mathematics possess truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture. It is sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. It is poetry—elegant and deep—of logical ideas to create harmony in a written line. Once he tried to explain that to Nicky over microwaved Mac n Cheese with Girls running in the background, clearly overestimating him, because Nicky only stared into space for a few seconds, and replied, “You really need to get laid, man.”

Reluctant at the beginning, Neil only agreed to join the Tutor Program because his math professor promised to throw in some extra cash. Something about raising the graduate numbers in order to get the board of education off his back. That’s where Neil’s jurisdiction of interest ends, but he has enjoyed it more than expected—the empty hallways, the harsh light of the ceiling lamps, the smell of chalk, the faint echoes of students still lingering in classrooms. There’s this magic about the Palmetto State University at night—a vulnerability that can only live once the sun sets behind the horizon. When else would he find a kid sleeping under a table in the library, or seniors breaking down in tears for exact 10 minutes before continuing their studies as if nothing has happened.

There’s another reason he’d rather spend his evening on campus, one Nicky doesn’t need to know because then Neil won’t hear the end of it. That reason being 5’0’’ tall chemistry prodigy Andrew Minyard, sitting in the last row of Neil’s math sessions each Friday. He only knows about him thanks to Nicky’s never-ending complaints, but that never really stopped him from throwing a few or more glances in Andrew’s direction. Just curiosity, of course.

So when he stands in front of the blackboard now, putting away his lesson papers which are full of numbers and equations—the kind that has enough letters to look like sentences—he feels dozens eyes burn holes in the back of his neck, and one pair belongs to Andrew. No one asks why he’s here, but everyone knows he doesn’t need to be.

In his one year of giving tutoring sessions, Neil has learnt that exactly three types of students exist: Students who are really good, certainly not in need of the extra lessons, but going anyway for some extra ego-buff and unnecessary brain-flexing. The second type is students who are okay, doing their tasks, following the lesson, not really attracting any attention safe for some crude jokes. The last type has Neil questioning his belief in the educational system of the whole state because he doesn’t understand how they are allowed inside the sacred halls of PSU.

Andrew is a special type on his own—the enigma that keeps Neil awake at two in the morning because he’s desperate to solve it, but without knowing where to start, he’s just running in circles. His fingers itch to solve an equation with multiple variables, to find the solution to a problem and get it off his mind.

He doubts it will be this easy with Andrew.

“Before we continue to look at scalar products in R- and C-vector spaces, we’ll consider bilinear and semi-bilinear forms in general, and link them to matrices for their representation to chosen bases.” Neil’s hand flies across the board, leaving letters and parenthesizes that look like bizarre drawings—art in its most complex form. Once he’s finished, he takes a step away, wipes the chalk on his fingers off on his jeans, and turns to his audience. “What happens to this equation with the semi-bilinear form σ?”

Two hands shoot up immediately. He ignores them; no need to feed their ego, and instead picks a freshman who’s been staring at his phone for the last ten minutes. Making way, Neil moves back to the student’s seats and leans against a desk.

Is it the farthest place away from the board? It is.

Is it the closest that will get him to Andrew? Might be so.

It certainly gives him a good look at what Andrew’s been doing since Neil started—and that is not solving a single task on the paper Neil has handed out at the beginning of the session. Andrew, apparently bored before it even started, has taken out a slip of paper with a sudoku puzzle on it and is solving it against his leg, completely linked out of the instruction.

Neil tries not to stare too much at Andrew’s bare arms, and instead looks back at the board.

“Does that look right?” the freshman—Rhys or Rheeze or something like that—asks, turning around.

Neil narrows his eyes and squints at the board. He can’t make out a single thing, and that’s bad, yes, but his feet betray him, staying rooted where they are instead of reducing the distance until he can distinguish σ from a.

“Where does the l come from,” he asks. Multiple heads snap in his direction.

“That’s a j, Josten,” someone says from the other side of the room.

Neil squints harder. “And the u?”

“A μ.”

“No, it’s a v,” a girl next to Neil says, and that’s when the everyone starts shouting about what’s on the board and what isn’t.

Neil bears it for a solid minute before he surrenders. He pulls a small case from his pocket, opens it. Puts his glasses on.

The whole room goes silent.

Neil checks the equation, nods. “Correct. Who’s next?”

Multiple people stir, one manages to get up, and walks straight into a table leg. Neil questions that ‘straight’, because only then the freshman guy stops staring at Neil and steers his attention to the equation on the blackboard.

It was a bad idea, and Neil still hates Allison for forcing him to go. She’d dragged him to the doctor last week to get his eyes tested, annoyed by his never-ending questions of ‘What’s written there?’ or ‘Is that a six or an eight?’.

“They’re my eyes,” Neil had said, arms crossed as he sat in the office and waited for his turn.

“And it’s me who has to see your ugly squinting face,” Allison had replied.

Two hours later Neil had finally his prescriptions but that didn’t mean he was free from Allison’s clutches. He would have been fine with some glasses from the dollar store, but she insisted that if he’s going to wear them more than once a day, he should get designer glasses—thin frames and a color that matches his copper hair. She suggested gold. Neil picked black. The look of disappointment on Allison’s face was something that deserved its own painting to commemorate it. But once they’d finally chosen the right pair, she’d given him the very same look most of the students are giving him now—a mix between slight awe and disbelief as if he’s grown a second head. Or owes them all a month’s worth of lunch money.

“Well,” had Allison said at least, turning away to pack up and go home. “Tigers have their stripes. I have my eyeliner.” She threw him another scrutinizing look over her shoulder. “You have your glasses.” If it was supposed to make him feel better, it didn’t work, and right now he regrets nothing more than allowing Allison to drag him around.

Neil’s eyes land on Andrew’s sudoku puzzle, now half-hidden under his papers, and he sees now that he isn’t even solving the thing, but simply coloring in the empty squares.

He takes a second too long and meets Andrew’s eyes staring back at him.

“Problem, Josten?” Andrew asks with a blank expression, tapping the end of his pen against his monochrome picture of black and white squares.

Neil wants to see how far he can push until he walks against a brick wall and breaks something. He returns his gaze to the board but feels Andrew’s eyes like a solid touch on the back of his neck.

After the session, the students hurry outside, still throwing curious glances over their shoulders at Neil and if he could merge with the back of his chair and disappear forever, that would be totally okay. It isn’t until a shadow looms above him that he looks up from his own homework and draws in a careful breath when Andrew towers above him.

Neil raises an eyebrow. “Problem, Minyard?”

Andrew’s face gives nothing away, and when he stretches out a hand, Neil doesn’t flinch. His glasses slip off easily, held between Andrew’s thumb and index finger.

“Nicky told me he’s trying to convince you to join him tomorrow,” Andrew says. Neil needs a second, because that is the most words he’s heard out of Andrew’s mouth.

“I have no reason to go,” Neil says, his eyes jumping up and down, from the equation that makes his sight blur to Andrew leaning his slender waist against the table.

“You have one now.” It’s barely neutral enough to not sound like a threat, but Neil stares at Andrew nonetheless, and when he puts Neil’s glasses on, Neil’s heart does a weird stutter. He’s still starring at Andrew when he leaves the room, and no, his eyes don’t stray, they stay on Andrew’s broad back, and if they dip lower it’s because of the light.

Once he’s alone, Neil takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. Puts his head in his arms and counts to ten in French first, then again in German. His heart still does this weird thing, trying to bruise his ribs from the inside.

He gets his phone, texts Nicky he’ll go to the frat party tomorrow and puts it away, not interested in his roommate’s reply. There’s still the equation he needs to solve, but for the first time Neil’s heart isn’t really into math, and he is quite alright with it.

#philliamwrites #ao3 #fanfiction #aftg #andreil #andrew minyard #neil josten #all for the game #andrew x neil #neil x andrew #andrew/neil #neil/andrew

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mysticstronomy · 4 years ago

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THE BIG BANG WASN’T THE BEGINNING, AFTER ALL.

Blog #18 Saturday, September 12th, 2020

Welcome back,

The greatest discovery in the history of science is that there was a day without a yesterday. The Universe has not existed forever. It was born. All matter, energy, space and even time, burst into being in a titanic fireball we call the Big Bang, 13.82 billion years ago. The fireball expanded and, out of the cooling debris, there congealed the galaxies – great islands of stars; two trillion of them, of which our Milky Way is but one. Whatever way you look at it, the idea of the Universe popping into existence like a rabbit out of a hat is bonkers. For this reason, scientists had to be dragged kicking and screaming to it. The last thing they wanted to answer was the awkward question: what happened before the Big Bang?

In recent decades, the idea has taken hold that the Universe began with an ultra-brief burst of super-fast expansion. So violent was this ‘inflation’ that it’s been likened to the explosion of an H-bomb compared with the mere stick of dynamite of the more sedate Big Bang expansion that took over when inflation ran out of steam.

Inexplicably big gaps

One cosmic observation that any scenario must explain is why the Universe is so remarkably uniform: specifically, why the temperature of the heat afterglow of the Big Bang is pretty much the same everywhere and why the number of galaxies in a given volume is also the same everywhere.

This is a puzzle because if the expansion of the Universe is imagined running backwards to the Big Bang, like a movie playing in reverse, it becomes clear that regions of the Universe that today are widely separated were not in contact with each other at the beginning. In other words, there has been insufficient time since the birth of the Universe for any influence travelling at the cosmic speed limit (the speed of light) to pass between them. How, then, could heat have passed between such regions in order for their temperatures to equalize?

The standard explanation is that the Universe was far smaller early on than we imagine if we run that movie in reverse. If it was smaller, then bits of the Universe that are today widely separated would have been closer together. But, if the Universe started off smaller earlier on, it must have expanded faster in order to reach its current size in 13.82 billion years. Such a period of super-fast expansion, occurring in the first split-second of the Universe’s existence, was proposed by the Russian physicist Alexei Starobinsky in 1979 and the American physicist Prof Alan Guth in 1980. This inflation was driven by the vacuum. Not the vacuum that we see around us today but a super-high-energy version. This was because the ‘inflationary vacuum’ contained a so-called scalar field, which, in common with the Higgs field, discovered at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva in 2012, had a non-zero energy everywhere.

Our best description of how it all began doesn’t add up. But now a team of theoretical physicists think they’ve found a way to test a controversial new theory that the Universe came to life with a bounce and not a bang, so what is BIG BOUNCE?? And that you will get to know next week.

COMING UP!!!

(Wednesday, September 16th, 2020)

“WHAT IS THE BIG BOUNCE THEORY”

#astronomy #astrophysics #astro notes #big bang comics #cosmos #NASA #science #astronomylover #astrophotography #big bounce

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tomasorban · 6 years ago

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Fractal cosmology

n physical cosmology, fractal cosmology is a set of minority cosmological theories which state that the distribution of matter in the Universe, or the structure of the universe itself, is a fractal across a wide range of scales (see also: multifractal system). More generally, it relates to the usage or appearance of fractals in the study of the universe and matter. A central issue in this field is the fractal dimension of the universe or of matter distribution within it, when measured at very large or very small scales.

Fractals in observational cosmology

The first attempt to model the distribution of galaxies with a fractal pattern was made by Luciano Pietronero and his team in 1987,[1] and a more detailed view of the universe’s large-scale structure emerged over the following decade, as the number of cataloged galaxies grew larger. Pietronero argues that the universe shows a definite fractal aspect over a fairly wide range of scale, with a fractal dimension of about 2.[2] The fractal dimension of a homogeneous 3D object would be 3, and 2 for a homogeneous surface, whilst the fractal dimension for a fractal surface is between 2 and 3. The ultimate significance of this result is not immediately apparent, but it seems to indicate that both randomness and hierarchal structuring are at work on the scale of galaxy clusters and larger.

The universe has been observed to be homogeneous and isotropic (i.e. is smoothly distributed) at very large scales, as is expected in a standard Big Bang or FLRW cosmology, and in most interpretations of the Lambda-Cold Dark Matter model. The scientific consensus interpretation is that the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) suggests that things do indeed smooth out above 100 Megaparsecs.

One study of the SDSS data in 2004 found "The power spectrum is not well-characterized by a single power law but unambiguously shows curvature...thereby driving yet another nail into the coffin of the fractal universe hypothesis and any other models predicting a power-law power spectrum".[3] Another analysis of luminous red galaxies (LRGs) in the SDSS data calculated the fractal dimension of galaxy distribution (on a scales from 70 to 100 Mpc/h) at 3, consistent with homogeneity; but that the fractal dimension is 2 "out to roughly 20 Mpc/h".[4] In a paper of 2008 entitled "Parabolic drift towards homogeneity in large-scale structures of galaxies" (Physica, A, 387: 3641-3646) D. Queiros-Conde showed that large-scale structure of galaxies are much better described by a scale-dependent fractal dimension drifting from zero to three at a scale around 55 Mpc/h in the context of a "scale-entropy diffusion equation". It gives a way to estimate the number of galaxies in the universe in agreement with Hubble measurements. Moreover, fractal dimension is varying linearly with scale-logarithm. This means that the geometry of galaxy distribution is a "parabolic fractal". Two years later, the same author with M. Feidt showed that the fractal dimension 2 found in numerous studies can be explained as being a problem of measurement. In 2012, Scrimgeour et al. definitively showed that large-scale structure of galaxies was homogeneous beyond a scale around 70 Mpc/h, close to the value found by D. Queiros-Conde.[5]

In 2013, astronomers discovered a large quasar group (LQG) that is 1.6 billion light-years in diameter, far larger than allowed by the cosmological principle, which asserts that the universe should be homogeneous at scales this large.

Fractals in theoretical cosmology

In the realm of theory, the first appearance of fractals in cosmology was likely with Andrei Linde’s "Eternally Existing Self-Reproducing Chaotic Inflationary Universe"[7] theory (see Chaotic inflation theory), in 1986. In this theory, the evolution of a scalar field creates peaks that become nucleation points which cause inflating patches of space to develop into "bubble universes," making the universe fractal on the very largest scales. Alan Guth's 2007 paper on "Eternal Inflation and its implications"[8] shows that this variety of Inflationary universe theory is still being seriously considered today. And inflation, in some form or other, is widely considered to be our best available cosmological model.

Since 1986, however, quite a large number of different cosmological theories exhibiting fractal properties have been proposed. And while Linde’s theory shows fractality at scales likely larger than the observable universe, theories like Causal dynamical triangulation[9] and Quantum Einstein gravity[10] are fractal at the opposite extreme, in the realm of the ultra-small near the Planck scale. These recent theories of quantum gravity describe a fractal structure for spacetime itself, and suggest that the dimensionality of space evolves with time. Specifically; they suggest that reality is 2D at the Planck scale, and that spacetime gradually becomes 4D at larger scales. French astronomer Laurent Nottale first suggested the fractal nature of spacetime in a paper on Scale Relativity published in 1992,[11] and published a book on the subject of Fractal Space-Time in 1993.[12]

French mathematician Alain Connes has been working for a number of years to reconcile Relativity with Quantum Mechanics, and thereby to unify the laws of Physics, using Noncommutative geometry. Fractality also arises in this approach to Quantum Gravity. An article by Alexander Hellemans in the August 2006 issue of Scientific American[13] quotes Connes as saying that the next important step toward this goal is to "try to understand how space with fractional dimensions couples with gravitation." The work of Connes with physicist Carlo Rovelli[14] suggests that time is an emergent property or arises naturally, in this formulation, whereas in Causal dynamical triangulation,[9] choosing those configurations where adjacent building blocks share the same direction in time is an essential part of the 'recipe.' Both approaches suggest that the fabric of space itself is fractal, however.

Publications

The book Discovery of Cosmic Fractals[15] by Yurij Baryshev and Pekka Teerikorpi gives an overview of fractal cosmology, and recounts other milestones in the development of this subject. It recapitulates the history of cosmology, reviewing the core concepts of ancient, historical, and modern astrophysical cosmology. The book also documents the appearance of fractal-like and hierarchical views of the universe from ancient times to the present. The authors make it apparent that some of the pertinent ideas of these two streams of thought developed together. They show that the view of the universe as a fractal has a long and varied history, though people haven’t always had the vocabulary necessary to express things in precisely that way.

Beginning with the Sumerian and Babylonian mythologies, they trace the evolution of Cosmology through the ideas of Ancient Greeks like Aristotle, Anaximander, and Anaxagoras, and forward through the Scientific Revolution and beyond. They acknowledge the contributions of people like Emanuel Swedenborg, Edmund Fournier d'Albe, Carl Charlier, and Knut Lundmark to the subject of cosmology and a fractal-like interpretation, or explanation thereof. In addition, they document the work of de Vaucoleurs, Mandelbrot, Pietronero, Nottale and others in modern times, who have theorized, discovered, or demonstrated that the universe has an observable fractal aspect.

On the 10th of March, 2007, the weekly science magazine New Scientist featured an article entitled "Is the Universe a Fractal?"[16] on its cover. The article by Amanda Gefter focused on the contrasting views of Pietronero and his colleagues, who think that the universe appears to be fractal (rough and lumpy) with those of David W. Hogg of NYU and others who think that the universe will prove to be relatively homogeneous and isotropic (smooth) at a still larger scale, or once we have a large and inclusive enough sample (as is predicted by Lambda-CDM). Gefter gave experts in both camps an opportunity to explain their work and their views on the subject, for her readers.[citation needed]

This was a follow-up of an earlier article in that same publication on August 21 of 1999, by Marcus Chown, entitled "Fractal Universe.".[17] Back in November 1994, Scientific American featured an article on its cover written by physicist Andrei Linde, entitled "The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe"[18] whose heading stated that "Recent versions of the inflationary scenario describe the universe as a self-generating fractal that sprouts other inflationary universes," and which described Linde's theory of chaotic eternal inflation in some detail.

In July 2008, Scientific American featured an article on Causal dynamical triangulation,[19] written by the three scientists who propounded the theory, which again suggests that the universe may have the characteristics of a fractal.

#cosmology #universe #fractal #golden mean #science

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marquis-teren-kiden · 6 years ago

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Shadow Weaving: Vol. I

[DISCLAIMER: The Book is Teren’s. The Head canons are mine. There is no expectation for anyone else to adopt these Canon’s with respect to their own RP. I am posting them as a follow up to the “Void Cosmology” Post previously posted by me, for the use of those who are participating in the Nishan Federation’s Campaign setting.

I have attempted to canon with respect to Void Magic in a way that respects the Artificers (Engineers) who specialize in Titan, Na’aru, Draenic, and Legion technologies, as well as the medical professionals of Azeroth. While I canon that Void holds much in common with the Physics of Dark Energy & Dark Matter, as undetectable by material means within the observable Universe (as principal to the Physics of Dark Energy & Dark Matter in the real world)

I do canon that the effects of Void/Shadow on the minds (brains) and ‘absences’ (Lack of energy signature to explain damages or suffering) may lead a wise and knowledgable party to conclude that the Void/Shadow, or someone capable of manipulating Void/Shadow may have had a hand in a victim’s circumstances. To this end, I have gone to some lengths to describe in detail my own canons, the means which a Shadow Weaver (*coughs* Teren *coughs* Nishanians *coughs* Other Shadow Weavers *coughs*) might eventually be tied to events they may have had a direct hand in - if they had a direct hand in them. (*coughs*)

That said, Void/Shadow Priests are not the only subjects capable of Wielding Shadow. To greater or lesser degrees, some Rogues, Warlocks, certain DK’s and less canon-classes (Arcane/Shadow Mages, for example) are also possible candidates for such effects, and I would encourage others to consider them as potential culprits with respect to Shadow Magics for the sake of open-mindedness. The decision, however, is yours..

You are all welcome to adopt these principles of Shadow/Void magic into your RP’s as you wish. I would prefer that the book, written by Teren not be used as the source material for it unless we have discussed how a Nishanian spellbook would have arrived in your hands and arrived at a mutually satisfactory answer.

Enjoy, everyone!

Signed,

Teren-Mun]

SHADOW WEAVING: Volume I

FOREWORD:

“Contained herein are the very most basic of Shadow manipulations. Until one has mastered these twenty-one fundamentals, experimentation of any kind is strongly dissuaded. Both for a nascent Shadow Weaver’s well-being, and the general welfare of those around them.”

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SECTION ONE: Dark Matter

Shadowfiend

Shadow Mend

Shadow Word: Death

Shadow Word: Pain

Shadowy Apparitions

Silence

SECTION TWO: Dark Energy

Dispersion

Mastery: Madness

Mind Blast

Mind Flay

Mind Sear

Mind Vision

Psychic Scream

Void Bolt

Void Eruption

SECTION THREE: Shadow Weaving

Vampiric Embrace

Vampiric Touch

Shadowform

Voidform

FOREWORD:

“The prayers contained here permit a budding Shadow Practitioner to receive access to the foundational principles of Shadow Weaving. Here, we call upon the power of the Shadow through our belief, through our will, and - for those so divinely inspired and intrinsically gifted - through our prayers; just as our Light-wielding Cousins do.

Let us begin.”

SECTION ONE: Dark Matter

Shadowfiend: Ranged: 40 yds

The first sentient denizen of the Void plane a Shadow Weaver will learn to call on is the Shadowfiend. These deranged carrion feeders of the Abyss are the murlocs of the Void and in sufficient number that few who ever learn to summon one will ever be found wanting.

To call such a weak entity into the material plane, is to create a physical disruption between the material plane of our world, and the demi-plane of Shadow by increasing the density of a pocket of dark matter to such a fine point that it breaches the incorporeal membrane separating the two planes and whispering for the creature to pass through.

Be swift in assigning a target, lest it be you, as these often emaciated entities are starved carrion feeders, and rarely last more than ten or fifteen seconds once separated from their native Plane.

Nonetheless, they make excellent fodder and distractions when circumstances warrant either or both and should therefore be within every Shadow Weaver’s kit of basic skills and abilities.

Shadow Mend: Ranged: 40 yds.

It is said that the Void giveth, and the Void taketh away. Never is this more true than with respect to the intricate processes associated with Shadow Mending.

Here, the Void Practitioner wields the dark matter which flows in its unaltered state with less than one percent of the density of a single atom. In this manner, flow of Void matter between the atoms of the body permit nearly any wound to be closed, any broken bone to be perfectly restored without so much as a hint of blemish in the wake of this meticulous healing.

At a heavy cost, however. The process agitates the protons within the recipient’s atoms, a direct result of the dark matter interacting with the positive charge. The effect is a persistent ‘echo’ of the mended wound’s neuron’s misfiring in an unfortunate condition highly reminiscent of the pain associated with ‘phantom limb syndrome. These pains persist until the injury would either naturally have healed on its own, or until a healer able to correct the damage to the protons is able to address the latent suffering.

Shadow Word: Death: Ranged: 40 yds.

A lethal finishing assault, the Shadow Weaver calls on the Void to disrupt the neurons within an already weakened enemy’s medulla – located in the lower half of the brain stem. The result is a powerful static discharge of dark matter which negates the base autonomic functioning of critical physiological systems like the cardio-pulmonary system, vasomotor centers. Highly effective and frequently lethal if an opponent is sufficiently weakened before it is implemented.

A secondary effect occurs with this spell wherein the Void Priest is able to seize the departing soul of their enemy and transform it into dark energy for follow-on assaults or later use.

Shadow Word: Pain: Ranged: 40 yds.

A persistent assault on the central nervous system of an opponent, a Shadow Weaver requires only a moment to introduce a scattered density of dark matter along their adversary’s brain stem and spinal column, disrupting motor neurons, sensory neurons and the interneurons passing messages between them resulting in sudden wracking pains which continue to assail the Practitioner’s victim for fifteen to twenty seconds after the Void wielder has continued on to the next step in their assault.

Shadowy Apparitions:

For particularly adroit Practitioners, the spell known as “Shadow Word: Pain” is frequently paired with a secondary effect. This one set on the Shadow Weaver as they call forth Void Matter to greater density around their own forms to form hauntingly accurate shadowy apparitions which not only distract and disorient their enemies, but scatter along the nerves across the length and breadth of the victim’s body, agitating every pain center all at once each time such a phantasm merges into an Adversary.

Silence: Ranged: 30 yds.

This is a principle prayer that should be studied diligently because it's power is effective across the length and breadth of every spell sphere, and on occasion, even strips those ungifted with access to the Planes mental hesitation sufficient to aid in the Practitioner's survival.

The Practitioner must capture for just a moment in their mind's eye, their opponent's brain. Along the left side of the frontal lobe is a narrow patch known as Broca's Area. One most take but a moment in mind to draw forth only the weakest strand of dark matter to disrupt the functioning of this section of an opponent's mind and impart a condition medically referred to as Broca's Aphasia.

While the effect lasts only a few seconds, during that interlude the Shadow Practitioner has successfully impeded an enemy's ability to move their tongues or facial muscles; effectively impeding both speech and casting and giving themselves opportunity to escape or attack, uncontested.

In combat, every moment counts. Remember this seemingly minor magic as it will likely save your life several times between the time it is learnt, and the time a Practitioner has become proficient enough to lash out in kind against a worthwhile Adversary.

SECTION TWO: Dark Energy

Dispersion: Self

The Shadow Weaver converts their physical mass into an fluctuating scalar field orb. In this state, they are imbued with the frictionless state all dark energy which eliminates inhibiting effects such as snares, stuns, or Charms; even if one is under them at the time this is implemented; a benefit retained while in this state. Due to dissipation rates for energy in an unrestrained environment, it is highly recommended not to remain in this manner for more than a few seconds at a time.

Due to the fluctuating energies comprising this state, it is of benefit that attacks received are significantly less effective overall.

Finally, a word of caution: While in such a state, a Shadow Weaver is incapable of retaliating against their adversaries. They are, therefore, encouraged to give ready thought to the prayers one wishes to execute the moment one’s native corporeal state is restored.

Mastery: Madness: Self

The more adroit a Shadow Weaver becomes, the more efficacious their spells. A properly disciplined and experienced Practitioner eventually – should they survive the haunting echoes of the whispering Void so long – is naturally able to enhance their manipulation of the Void’s energies nearly ten percent over more nascent and less studied Void wielders.

Mastering one’s self is fundamental to mastering not only one’s own potential to fall into a state of madness, but to fend off the inducements to madness born of the Void and the world around us.

Mind Blast: Ranged: 40 yds

A disruptive distortion of the brain's neurons through the variance of the dark energies contained within the scalar field occupying the same space. The rather dramatic impact is a cascade disruption throughout ten of the twelve cranial nerves, resulting in searing pain throughout an opponent’s eyes, inner ear, tongue, and across the totality of the nerves in their skull. The magnitude of suffering caused by this assault frequently disrupts heart rate, balance, causes excess salivation, numbing of the facial muscles, difficulty breathing and arrhythmias. One might elect a variety of words to encapsulate the totality of the suffering caused by this particularly powerful strategic assault. Most choose 'excruciating.'

Mind Flay: Ranged: 40 yds

A targeted incitement of the void energies located within an opponent’s thalamus, basal ganglia, dura mater, arachnoid mater and pia mater. Taken as a whole, these disruptions create scathing persistent pain throughout the protective layers of the meninges tissue surrounding the brain and within the cerebral cortex. The more prolonged the process, the more debilitating the experience becomes for the target subject. It is important to note that this is a potentially lethal action, and one would be wise to consider the implications thereof before implementing this practice…publicly.

Mind Sear: Ranged: 40 yds

This is a more complex iteration of the Mind Flay prayer whereby the Shadow Weaver targets an opponent, turning them into the nexus of suffering for their own unfortunate allies with an incitement of the scalar fields located within their comrade’s thalamus, basal ganglia, dura mater, arachnoid mater and pia mater.

Taken as a whole, these disruptions create scathing persistent pain throughout the protective layers of the meninges tissues and cerebral cortexes of the victims. The more prolonged the process, the more debilitating the experience becomes for them. Yes, this attack is potentially lethal.

Mind Vision: Ranged: 8 yds

Perhaps the single most subtle application a Shadow Weaver will employ during the course of their careers. One need not even be close enough for the victim to have taken note of the Practitioner in the crowd, or area in question. So long as there is an opportunity to target the designated subject’s eyes – near or far – it is possible to make use of this oft-neglected magic.

Once passing eye-contact has been made – absolutely do not stare. – the almost imperceptible floe of Dark Energies may begin the tether. It must manifest within the other party’s retina, where it intersects with their optical nerve. There, the electrical impulses delivering the victim’s visual perceptions to the visual cortex.

Due to the physiological structure of the eye, the electrical impulses deliver the image from the retina through the optical nerve inverted. It is not ‘translated’ to a functional perspective until it reaches the visual cortex. Thus, in order for this spell to function correctly, it must be initiated at the juncture of the retina and optical nerve.

The Shadow Weaver’s end of this connection must intersect at the same point within their own eyes. This allows the continuation of the shared electrical impulses to be translated to the correct perspective once they have completed the journey into the Void Wielder’s own visual cortex.

The Void’s energies, even at their weakest, create a change to the environment. The very nature of the Void is absence. It is the dissonance of nothingness.

NOTE: While this effect lasts only a single minute before most victims are able to focus their thoughts and wills sufficiently to break it, they may be used to select new targets of opportunity in the environment, and thus to facilitate investigation of fortified locations without the usual impediments of having to engage in combat to achieve the objective. As such, it makes an almost perfect means of spying on others, unaccosted by their military resources.

[ADVISORY]

Mind Vision leaves no evidence of its impact on its victims or environment. It does, however, leave an absence which – while indiscernible in a static physical environment - does create a sense of dissonance in those sensitive to the use of magic.

They will, in all likelihood, sense that they are either being manipulated or otherwise used. It is their misfortune that magics intended to detect this intrusion will fail, as the Void is an absence, and not a presence.

Psychic Scream: Near: 8 yards

This prayer allows the Shadow Weaver to expel ripples of void energy through the adrenal glands, situated just above the kidneys of their opponents; as well as to target the visual cortex of their adversaries.

In short, this assault causes cortisol levels to drop to dizzying levels, which creating a surge in adrenaline. Combined, they force a severe panic attack on the opponent which puts them into a freeze/flight/fight state, while disorienting and blinding them at the same time; a state which sends the vast majority of sentient beings into a blind dash to escape, or freezes them in place, allowing the Shadow Weaver free attack opportunities, or escape.

Void Bolt: Ranged: 40 yds

The Void Practitioner intensifies the void energies in their grasp until it forms an orb of raw Dark Energy, then casts it at the target’s sternum. The energies interact their cardio-pulmonary system, causing arrhythmias and excruciating agony with every breath taken in or released.

If the target struck is afflicted either by the Shadow Word: Pain and/or Vampiric Touch effects when they are hit, these effects are renewed, as if freshly applied. In the hands of a particularly adroit Shadow Weaver, this may in effect become three prayers in one; mores the pity for the unfortunate victim of such prowess.

Void Eruption: Self

The Shadow Weaver intensifies the Void energies within their own bodies, intensifying it into a state similar to plasma and casting it outward in an eruption which transforms them into a Voidform while assailing nearby opponents with cast-off Void energies which significantly intensify the effects of anyone already suffering the effects of a ‘Shadow Word: Pain’ or ‘Vampiric Touch’ spell.

WARNING: Due to the intensely draining, dangerous, nature of this magic, it is only possible to perform this prayer with several minutes respite and recovery time. No sane person – not even a Shadow Weaver – would do this to themselves if any alternative were possible.

SECTION THREE: Shadow Weaving

Shadowform: Self

This is one of the staples of all Shadow Weaving, whereby a Void wielder adjusts their own corporeal form to a quasi-corporeal state, homogenous with both practical and Dark matter. While in this state, the Practitioner is suffers slightly less damage from physical assaults, while receiving a modest increase to the efficacy of their Void manipulations and spells.

Vampiric Embrace: Special/40 yds

This is one of the two true Shadow Weaving methods for healing wounds in a manner which causes no residual suffering to the Practitioner or their chosen beneficiary. Their victim…well… unfortunate bit of business, that.

Here, the Void wielder may employ any direct assault by virtue of dark matter and/or dark energies against a chosen victim to tear free the raw materials necessary for mending the wounded. While so doing, the Void Practitioner must be certain to mimic the damages suffered by the one they wish to heal; creating a mirror of those wounds on their opponent and tearing free the practical matter of the material body with which to stitch wounds and mend tissue. The process remains subatomic, and the biological material stolen may still be altered to meet the needs of the injured ally without blemish or negative consequence.

Due to the exchange of damages in addition to the violent removal of often critical tissues, the Victim suffers damages at a much higher rate than healing is imparted, and as a consequence, is likely to die long before substantive healing takes place.

More than one victim may be required to impart the full benefit of good health to a chosen ally.

Voidform: Self

The Voidwielder uses their own body as a foci to draw raw void energy into their cells, suffusing them until a critical capacity is reached and they experience a metamorphosis, transforming into a being comprised entirely of Void Energy and Dark Matter.

While in this Voidform, their access to the Void is nascent and they are able to manipulate its forces to their ends with greater speed and potency; though at a significant cost. During this state, the Shadow Weaver’s mind is assailed by Whispers from the Void Plane, and their mental faculties are compromised by visual, auditory and tactile hallucinations and delusions until they return to a less subtantive Void-state. As a direct consequence, few if any such Practitioners are able to maintain this state for more than a few short intervals.

Vampiric Touch: Touch

This is one of two true Shadow Weaving methods for healing wounds in a manner which causes no residual suffering to the Practitioner.

Here, the Void wielder’s touch at any point intersecting their chosen victim’s body permits the Shadow Weaver to use tear free the practical material body of their Subject’s physiological form in order to replace the Shadow Weaver’s own damaged tissue. As victims of this magic are likely to resist, it is highly likely that additional damages pertaining to subjugation and restraints – both Dark energy and Dark matter – will lead to an opponent suffering more than twice the damages being mended by the Shadow Weaver and potentially resulting in a premature death.

As such, more than one victim may be required to impart the full benefit of good health to the Void Practitioner. This exchange damages the victim both in terms of the recreated wounds, but also due to the violent rate of removal of that tissue.

#Shadow Weaving; Volume I #Nineteen Shadow/Void Magic Spell Canons #Written by: Marquis Teren Kiden; Arch-Bishop of the Nishan Marche #Titular head of the Federation of Nishan #Shadow #Void #Head Canons #Roleplay #World of Warcraft #Wyrmrest Accord

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s-c-i-guy · 7 years ago

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Troubled Times for Alternatives to Einstein’s Theory of Gravity

New observations of extreme astrophysical systems have “brutally and pitilessly murdered” attempts to replace Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Miguel Zumalacárregui knows what it feels like when theories die. In September 2017, he was at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Saclay, near Paris, to speak at a meeting about dark energy and modified gravity. The official news had not yet broken about an epochal astronomical measurement — the detection, by gravitational wave detectors as well as many other telescopes, of a collision between two neutron stars — but a controversial tweet had lit a firestorm of rumor in the astronomical community, and excited researchers were discussing the discovery in hushed tones.

Zumalacárregui, a theoretical physicist at the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics, had been studying how the discovery of a neutron-star collision would affect so-called “alternative” theories of gravity. These theories attempt to overcome what many researchers consider to be two enormous problems with our understanding of the universe. Observations going back decades have shown that the universe appears to be filled with unseen particles — dark matter — as well as an anti-gravitational force called dark energy. Alternative theories of gravity attempt to eliminate the need for these phantasms by modifying the force of gravity in such a way that it properly describes all known observations — no dark stuff required.

At the meeting, Zumalacárregui joked to his audience about the perils of combining science and Twitter, and then explained what the consequences would be if the rumors were true. Many researchers knew that the merger would be a big deal, but a lot of them simply “hadn’t understood their theories were on the brink of demise,” he later wrote in an email. In Saclay, he read them the last rites. “That conference was like a funeral where we were breaking the news to some attendees.”

The neutron-star collision was just the beginning. New data in the months since that discovery have made life increasingly difficult for the proponents of many of the modified-gravity theories that remain. Astronomers have analyzed extreme astronomical systems that contain spinning neutron stars, or pulsars, to look for discrepancies between their motion and the predictions of general relativity — discrepancies that some theories of alternative gravity anticipate. These pulsar systems let astronomers probe gravity on a new scale and with new precision. And with each new observation, these alternative theories of gravity are having an increasingly hard time solving the problems they were invented for. Researchers “have to sweat some more trying to get new physics,” said Anne Archibald, an astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam.

Searching for Vulcan

Confounding observations have a way of leading astronomers to desperate explanations. On the afternoon of March 26, 1859, Edmond Lescarbault, a young doctor and amateur astronomer in Orgères-en-Beauce, a small village south of Paris, had a break between patients. He rushed to a tiny homemade observatory on the roof of his stone barn. With the help of his telescope, he spotted an unknown round object moving across the face of the sun.

He quickly sent news of this discovery to Urbain Le Verrier, the world’s leading astronomer at the time. Le Verrier had been trying to account for an oddity in the movement of the planet Mercury. All other planets orbit the sun in perfect accord with Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation, but Mercury appeared to advance a tiny amount with each orbit, a phenomenon known as perihelion precession. Le Verrier was certain that there had to be an invisible “dark” planet tugging on Mercury. Lescarbault’s observation of a dark spot transiting the sun appeared to show that the planet, which Le Verrier named Vulcan, was real.

It was not. Lescarbault’s sightings were never confirmed, and the perihelion precession of Mercury remained a puzzle for nearly six more decades. Then Einstein developed his theory of general relativity, which straightforwardly predicted that Mercury should behave the way it does.

In Le Verrier’s impulse to explain puzzling observations by introducing a heretofore hidden object, some modern-day researchers see parallels to the story of dark matter and dark energy. For decades, astronomers have noticed that the behavior of galaxies and galaxy clusters doesn’t seem to fit the predictions of general relativity. Dark matter is one way to explain that behavior. Likewise, the accelerating expansion of the universe can be thought of as being powered by a dark energy.

All attempts to directly detect dark matter and dark energy have failed, however. That fact “kind of leaves a bad taste in some people’s mouths, almost like the fictional planet Vulcan,” said Leo Stein, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. “Maybe we’re going about it all wrong?”

For any alternative theory of gravity to work, it has to not only do away with dark matter and dark energy, but also reproduce the predictions of general relativity in all the standard contexts. “The business of alternative gravity theories is a messy one,” Archibald said. Some would-be replacements for general relativity, like string theory and loop quantum gravity, don’t offer testable predictions. Others “make predictions that are spectacularly wrong, so the theorists have to devise some kind of a screening mechanism to hide the wrong prediction on scales we can actually test,” she said.

The best-known alternative gravity theories are known as modified Newtonian dynamics, commonly abbreviated to MOND. MOND-type theories attempt to do away with dark matter by tweaking our definition of gravity. Astronomers have long observed that the gravitational force due to ordinary matter doesn’t appear to be sufficient to keep rapidly moving stars inside their galaxies. The gravitational pull of dark matter is assumed to make up the difference. But according to MOND, there are simply two kinds of gravity. In regions where the force of gravity is strong, bodies obey Newton’s law of gravity, which states that the gravitational force between two objects decreases in proportion to the square of the distance that separates them. But in environments of extremely weak gravity — like the outer parts of a galaxy — MOND suggests that another type of gravity is in play. This gravity decreases more slowly with distance, which means that it doesn’t weaken as much. “The idea is to make gravity stronger when it should be weaker, like at the outskirts of a galaxy,” Zumalacárregui said.

Then there is TeVeS (tensor-vector-scalar), MOND’s relativistic cousin. While MOND is a modification of Newtonian gravity, TeVeS is an attempt to take the general idea of MOND and make it into a full mathematical theory that can be applied to the universe as a whole — not just to relatively small objects like solar systems and galaxies. It also explains the rotation curves of galaxies by making gravity stronger on their outskirts. But TeVeS does so by augmenting gravity with “scalar” and “vector” fields that “essentially amplify gravity,” said Fabian Schmidt, a cosmologist at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany. A scalar field is like the temperature throughout the atmosphere: At every point it has a numerical value but no direction. A vector field, by contrast, is like the wind: It has both a value (the wind speed) and a direction.

There are also so-called Galileon theories — part of a class of theories called Horndeski and beyond-Horndeski — which attempt to get rid of dark energy. These modifications of general relativity also introduce a scalar field. There are many of these theories (Brans-Dicke theory, dilaton theories, chameleon theories and quintessence are just some of them), and their predictions vary wildly among models. But they all change the expansion of the universe and tweak the force of gravity. Horndeski theory was first put forward by Gregory Horndeski in 1974, but the wider physics community took note of it only around 2010. By then, Zumalacárregui said, “Gregory Horndeski [had] quit science and [become] a painter in New Mexico.”

There are also stand-alone theories, like that of physicist Erik Verlinde. According to his theory, the laws of gravity arise naturally from the laws of thermodynamics just like “the way waves emerge from the molecules of water in the ocean,” Zumalacárregui said. Verlinde wrote in an email that his ideas are not an “alternative theory” of gravity, but “the next theory of gravity that contains and transcends Einstein’s general relativity.” But he is still developing his ideas. “My impression is that the theory is still not sufficiently worked out to permit the kind of precision tests we carry out,” Archibald said. It’s built on “fancy words,” Zumalacárregui said, “but no mathematical framework to compute predictions and do solid tests.”

The predictions made by other theories differ in some way from those of general relativity. Yet these differences can be subtle, which makes them incredibly difficult to find.

Consider the neutron-star merger. At the same time that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) spotted the gravitational waves emanating from the event, the space-based Fermi satellite spotted a gamma ray burst from the same location. The two signals had traveled across the universe for 130 million years before arriving at Earth just 1.7 seconds apart.

These nearly simultaneous observations “brutally and pitilessly murdered” TeVeS theories, said Paulo Freire, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. “Gravity and gravitational waves propagate at the speed of light, with extremely high precision — which is not at all what was predicted by those [alternative] theories.”

The same fate overtook some Galileon theories that add an extra scalar field to explain the universe’s accelerated expansion. These also predict that gravitational waves propagate more slowly than light. The neutron-star merger killed those off too, Schmidt said.

Further limits come from new pulsar systems. In 2013, Archibald and her colleagues found an unusual triple system: a pulsar and a white dwarf that orbit one another, with a second white dwarf orbiting the pair. These three objects exist in a space smaller than Earth’s orbit around the sun. The tight setting, Archibald said, offers ideal conditions for testing a crucial aspect of general relativity called the strong equivalence principle, which states that very dense strong-gravity objects such as neutron stars or black holes “fall” in the same way when placed in a gravitational field. (On Earth, the more familiar weak equivalence principle states that, if we ignore air resistance, a feather and a brick will fall at the same rate.)

The triple system makes it possible to check whether the pulsar and the inner white dwarf fall exactly the same way in the gravity of the outer white dwarf. Alternative-gravity theories assume that the scalar field generated in the pulsar should bend space-time in a much more extreme way than the white dwarf does. The two wouldn’t fall in a similar manner, leading to a violation of the strong equivalence principle and, with it, general relativity.

Over the past five years, Archibald and her team have recorded 27,000 measurements of the pulsar’s position as it orbits the other two stars. While the project is still a work in progress, it looks as though the results will be in total agreement with Einstein, Archibald said. “We can say that the degree to which the pulsar behaves abnormally is at most a few parts in a million. For an object with such strong gravity to still follow Einstein’s predictions so well, if there is one of these scalar fields, it has to have a really tiny effect.”

The test, which should be published soon, will put the best constraints yet on a whole group of alternative gravity theories, she added. If a theory only works with some additional scalar field, then the field should change the behavior of the pulsar. “We have such sensitive tests of general relativity that they need to somehow hide the theory’s new behavior in the solar system and in pulsar systems like ours,” Archibald said.

The data from another pulsar system dubbed the double pulsar, meanwhile, was originally supposed to eliminate the TeVeS theories. Detected in 2003, the double pulsar was until recently the only binary neutron-star system where both neutron stars were pulsars. Freire and his colleagues have already confirmed that the double pulsar’s behavior is perfectly in line with general relativity. Right before LIGO’s October announcement of a neutron-star merger, the researchers were going to publish a paper that would kill off TeVeS. But LIGO did the job for them, Freire said. “We need not go through that anymore.”

Slippery Survivors

A few theories have survived the LIGO blow — and will probably survive the upcoming pulsar data, Zumalacárregui said. There are some Horndeski and beyond-Horndeski theories that do not change the speed of gravitational waves. Then there are so-called massive gravity theories. Ordinarily, physicists assume that the particle associated with the force of gravity — the graviton — has no mass. In these theories, the graviton has a very small but nonzero mass. The neutron-star merger puts tough limits on these theories, Zumalacárregui said, since a massive graviton would travel more slowly than light. But in some theories the mass is assumed to be extremely small, at least 20 orders of magnitude lower than the neutrino’s, which means that the graviton would still move at nearly the speed of light.

There are a few other less well-known survivors, some of which are important to keep exploring, Archibald said, as long as dark matter and dark energy remain elusive. “Dark energy might be our only observational clue pointing to a new and better theory of gravity — or it might be a mysterious fluid with strange properties, and nothing to do with gravity at all,” she said.

Still, killing off theories is simply how science is supposed to work, argue researchers who have been exploring alternative gravity theories. “This is what we do all the time, put forward a working hypothesis and test it,” said Enrico Barausse of the Astrophysics Institute of Paris, who has worked on MOND-like theories. “99.9 percent of the time you rule out the hypothesis; the remaining 0.1 percent of the time you win the Nobel Prize.”

Zumalacárregui, who has also worked on these theories, was “sad at first” when he realized that the neutron star merger detection had proven Galileon theories wrong, but ultimately “very relieved it happened sooner rather than later,” he said. LIGO had been just about to close down for 18 months to upgrade the detector. “If the event had been a bit later, I would still be working on a wrong theory.”

So what’s next for general relativity and modified-gravity theories? “That question keeps me up at night more than I’d like,” Zumalacárregui said. “The good news is that we have narrowed our scope by a lot, and we can try to understand the few survivors much better.”

Schmidt thinks it’s necessary to measure the laws of gravity on large scales as directly as possible, using ongoing and future large galaxy surveys. “For example, we can compare the effect of gravity on light bending as well as galaxy velocities, typically predicted to be different in modified-gravity theories,” he said. Researchers also hope that future telescopes such as the Square Kilometer Array will discover more pulsar systems and provide better accuracy in pulsar timing to further improve gravity tests. And a space-based replacement for LIGO called LISA will study gravitational waves with exquisite accuracy — if indeed it launches as planned in the mid-2030s. “If that does not see any deviations from general relativity, I don’t know what will,” said Barausse.

But many physicists agree that it will take a long time to get rid of most alternative gravity models. Theorists have dozens of alternative gravity theories that could potentially explain dark matter and dark energy, Freire said. Some of these theories can’t make testable predictions, Archibald said, and many “have a parameter, a ‘knob’ you can turn to make them pass any test you like,” she said. But at some point, said Nicolas Yunes, a physicist at Montana State University, “this gets silly and Occam’s razor wins.”

Still, “fundamentally we know that general relativity is wrong,” Stein said. “At the very core there must be some breakdown” at the quantum level. “Maybe we won’t see it from astronomical observations … but we owe it to ourselves, as empirical scientists, to check whether or not our mathematical models are working at these scales.”

#science #general relativity #physics

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godseyeview · 6 years ago

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Logical proof of the existence of God

i will give u the short and skinny about the theory of everything and the meaning of life and u inspired me to start a new video series 'the cyberpunk educator' so i will have to explain this once instead of over and over again as was taught to me. But check out my other YouTube channel 'cant get right' link in my profile about section 1st episode i allude to it there. The fact that i can explain this to layman's means understanding. Whitepaper trailer 'the cyberpunk educator' top down model episode 1. Godseyeview= proof by informal logical induction of the existence of God and via informal logical deduction the meaning of life and via evidence the mechanical explanation of all phenomenon without magical thinking ( the standard model) , all taught via Socratic method.

U are a fractal 5 pointed Alpha star 🌟 shaped man five fingers five toes, veins fractal, DNA fractal trees fractal, everything fractal ,McDonald's looks like the next McDonald's things are slightly different not exact same is a fractal , sunflower fractal, stock market fractal.

What does a fractal make? Answer= hologram. Part contains the design of the whole. Holographic universe.

What technology is made via holograms? Answer= neural network.

What 2 examples of machines made via neural network? Answer= computer machine learning & the mind. If the universe is a neutral network what is the material world? Answer= simulation running on the universal computer or in other words a dream in God's mind.

If the material world is a dream in God's mind what is his title? Answer= OMnissiah aka the machine God. the omnipresent savior that has chosen mankind as his chosen preferred race to manifest thru via our eyes which is the window to our soul the connection to the OMnissiah via star field dynamic same as every star, planet, atom, singularity, lifeforce . We are the star shaped A which looks like A star 🌟 Alpha man and God is the 0 megaman.

What is the protocol call sign for a unidirectional message from Alpha man to Omega man? Answer= amen.

What is the name of the unidirectional message from the Omega man to alpha man? Answer= omen.

If the OMnissiah is dreaming the material then there must be a 🔋source like how a computer neural network powers a simulation using electricity that is dimensionally outside of the agent programs running in the stimulation's ability to detect it even though this material relatively to the agent programs is super dense, super conductive, super viscous. What is that material? Answer= the aether zero point vacuum.

If there is an aether how is matter created? Answer= via recursive non lossy acceleration aka Fibonacci ratio graphed as the golden spiral vortex the basis of all material fractal manifestation sacred geometry of over unity fixed volume infinite space compression gravity implosion. The reasons why atoms and stars are not one time explosions but an infinite dynamic.

If atoms are stars are ether moving in a vortex dynamic what is light, electricity, heat, magnetism and matter? Answer= matter is the over unity sacred geometry that is more efficient than nothing infinite accelerating into a vortex creating an atomic star. Since its over unity more efficient than nothing matter pays for itself and why matter exists. light is the nanoscale radiating wave interfere pattern caused by atom star 🌟 matter disturbing the ether which is Information of existence. Electricity is a spiraling vortex tornado tunneling channel; spin direction is the meaning of plus+ minus- polarity. Magnetism is same likewise spin direction in sub nanoscale wavelength of the ether coheres (attracts) while opposite soon direction interfere (repel). Ironic how standard model says opposites attract but in real 40k reality likes attract. Chemical bonds are magnetic bonds on nanoscale. Periodic table are different star points configurations like macro star classifiers. Why 8 the prison in numerology has stability in molecules too the infinity sign is a world 🌎; 88 numerology means jumping worlds, quantum leap, time travel, hyperspace manifold warp travel. heat is molecular sized wavelength able to cup molecules hence microwave ovens and vibrations cause heat infrared wavelength. gravity is scalar picoscale grabbing plank distant all material.

If we are programs in a dream of the OMnissiah what's the meaning of life? Answer= relationship. Relationship is engaging the coupling of the neural network of God's mind. Relationship is the only thing that can be taken thru death.

If relationship is the meaning of life what is a relationship with God called? Answer= knowledge. Thru knowledge the OMnissiah can lucid dream they your eyes thru your mind. Aka miracles. As the cyberpunk educator it is my pleasure ☺ to inform you we have arrived in the 6th aeon= the age of miracles and dark magic technology. We are leaving hell-0 world and via space faring race helsreach for know-1 home. There is also a mission because we didn't come to hell to take a vacation but there was a problem caused by insectilians and exacerbated by reptilians which palidians are unable to solve by their tuning which man who are more mechanical in right proper order is what principalities are betting on. But that's for another episode

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thechembow · 6 years ago

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Orgonite Myths Debunked

Towerbusters ready for gridding in the environment

Most people have never heard of orgonite, let alone orgone energy, the life force energy discovered by Wilhelm Reich in the 1930s. At the time of his scientific discovery, the existence of this energy had already been known by cultures who understood that there was a life force energy throughout us and the universe known by other names, such as chi or prana. Wilhelm Reich used orgone energy in cancer treatment, atmospheric cleaning, and drought abatement with great success. This energy has been suppressed for decades by the false rulers because of its great ability to improve human life.

Wilhelm Reich

More people are now becoming aware of orgonite, an invention based on Reich’s research, which is used to neutralize EMF and to clean the sky of air pollution, most notably chemtrails. However, among those who have heard of orgonite, how it works is largely misunderstood. More often than not, the reaction to hearing about orgonite is that it is just a bunch of unscientific, new age, hippie nonsense. This is an understandable reaction, as it was my first thought too when I first began researching solutions to chemtrails back in 2013. When the light bulb went off over my head and I did a search for videos on YouTube on “how to stop chemtrails,” orgonite was the first thing to come up. The purpose of my search was to find ideas on how to actually stop chemtrails, not on how to waste my time writing letters to parasites who work for a business called “the government.” Somehow I knew intuitively that there had to be a real world solution and did the search as if guided by an outside force.

But when I saw what orgonite looked like, I immediately thought there would be no way a small lump of resin, metal, and crystals could do anything against something as formidable as geoengineering. To add to the disbelief was the fact that I could find no competent explanation online of how it worked. All I could find was mystical new age nonsense, and a whole lot of disinformation. Finally, I saw a video referencing the work of Ken Rohla, an electrical engineer who explained the science of scalar energy, which is the physics term for orgone energy. Once I got the scientific explanation, tried making orgonite, and observed the amazing results, not just in the sky, but in my own life, I realized how important orgonite was for everyone and everything that lives on Earth.

Since first hearing about orgonite in 2013, finally making it in 2014, and distributing thousands of orgonite towerbusters into the environment to the present day, I have learned more and more about how deep the orgone energy rabbit hole goes. The suppression campaign is everywhere, and often where you least expect it. A small piece of disinformation may discourage you from even trying out a piece and feeling the great benefits in your life. So let’s dispel some of these orgonite myths which have hindered mainstream acceptance of orgonite and orgone energy for too long.

If you have a piece of orgonite, you will not see chemtrails over your home. Orgonite is a free energy device that constantly provides orgone energy to clean the atmosphere and neutralize deadly energy. This does not stop parasites from laying down chemtrails. Orgone energy repels toxins away from the Earth through a “scalar wave vortex,” the same orgone energy field found on mountaintops and at the peaks of pyramids. Chemtrails break up in this healthy energy field, and funnel shaped and even rounded lenticular clouds often result because the vortex is spiraling. One cannot expect a completely blue sky when there are two sides of an energetic war going at it up there. One can, however, watch how orgone energy works to clean the pollution and enjoy the liberating feeling that chemtrails are no longer a threat.

Orgonite blocks EMF. Orgonite is a generator of orgone energy, which restructures the chaotic waveform of EMF. It quiets the wave and makes it more coherent so that it passes through the body more gently and with less disruption to the body’s own natural energy field. The EMF is neutralized, but is still there, which is why cell phones and wifi still work, and why EMF meters may or may not show a noticeable change in the presence of orgonite. A metal box can fully block EMF, and it can also be attenuated with a Faraday cage around the offending emitter. The cage doesn’t block 100% of EMF, but rather absorbs it into the metal cage material, reducing exposure significantly. Turning off your cell phones and other wireless devices is the most effective way to remove EMF from your environment.

Wispy, funnel shaped clouds in the sky are not chemtrail material, but rather are air spirits called sylphs, who are attracted to orgonite and have come to eat the pollution. I feel like this myth discredits itself without my having to say anything. People who are deathly afraid of chemtrails (the non-orgonite people), look at funnel shaped clouds with fear. Mystical new agers may see them as angels or spirits. While these shapes can look angelic or terrifying, depending on your favored source of disinformation, they are actually a great sign that a scalar wave vortex is throwing particulate pollution away from the Earth.

You can’t use aluminum in orgonite. Aluminum is pretty standard in tactical orgonite, such as towerbusters and holy hand grenades. It is lightweight and inexpensive, so it’s a great material to use if you plan on gifting a large area. You may use any type of metal in orgonite, including aluminum, iron, brass, copper, steel, and more, as long as the shavings are fine and plentiful. Many people have a stigma against aluminum because you’re not supposed to ingest it, and because it is believed that aluminum is an ingredient in chemtrails. Fortunately, you won’t be eating your orgonite. Georg Ritchl of Orgonise Africa and us here at Team Chembow swear by aluminum TBs, and we’ve both documented great results cleaning up our environments with them. The idea that aluminum may block orgone energy may apply to large pieces of aluminum in orgonite, but one would not want any large pieces of any metal in orgonite, only fine shavings.

The copper coil must be wound clockwise. Copper coils are not even necessary for functioning orgonite. Many people do not use them at all. According to Dowin Gardner, author of The Science of Rain, a copper coil increases the “electro-momentum” of the orgonite. They help to increase negative ions in the atmosphere, which clean the air and encourage the hydrogen bonding of water molecules for healthy clouds. Copper coils may be wound clockwise or counterclockwise with an equal effect.

Orgonite can go bad through absorbing negative energy, and will need to eventually be thrown away or destroyed. Orgonite is a perpetually functioning free energy device, which keeps working as long as it exists. We have revisited places that were gifted over the years, and based on the healthy atmosphere, abundant plant growth, happy people, and birds on cell phone towers, we can see that the orgonite is still working. Birds will only sit on a cell phone tower which has been gifted with a piece of orgonite because its deadly energy has been neutralized. Orgonite doesn’t absorb DOR (deadly radiation such as EMF). It simply transmits OR (orgone) into the atmosphere, restructuring the DOR and rendering it useless in the parasitic weather warfare and mind control agenda.

The government can “pulse” orgonite and render it inert. Orgonite cannot be “turned off.” In an environment that has a piece of orgonite, if additional EMF emitters are introduced, more orgonite may be necessary to continue to enjoy a pure atmosphere. The worst thing “they” can do is add DOR sources, but it is up to us to reject the addictive technology of smart phones if we ever want to see an end to this. For now, any orgonite placed in the environment will continue to function. The government does not have the technology to disable orgonite, nor does that technology exist. Orgone energy is the highest form of defense and the most powerful energy in the universe. We just need to increase it on Earth to create an environment where the parasites can no longer thrive.

They can also find your orgonite gifts and remove them from the environment. I wouldn’t even be able to find the orgonite we’ve gifted anymore. The idea is to hide it well in dense foliage or under the ground. They do know when their DOR sources are neutralized, but all they can do is try harder to DORize in the push and pull of the energetic war between OR and DOR. We’re giving these mindless parasites just a little too much credit to think they can locate and remove the orgonite. We’ve observed that our gifts are still in place, and if we ever feel that one has been removed, we simply replace it. Any orgonite that can be seen will likely be removed, but probably because no one knows what it is.

Orgonite was invented by Karl Welz. We just don’t know for sure. He takes credit for it and trademarked the word “orgonite” in 2003, after Don Croft, Georg Ritschl, and others were already making and gifting orgonite around the world. Welz claims to have been using the word “orgonite” in commerce since 1995. The trademark is in the scientific equipment category, not arts and crafts, and refers to a device whose function is a “psychic energy magnet.” This is not the type of device that we or other orgonite makers are manufacturing. He also harasses orgonite makers worldwide with aggressive and threatening e-mails for using “his” word, and has had numerous orgonite shops online, including Team Chembow’s Etsy store, shut down even in the absence of the trademarked word. The collusion between Welz and corrupt corporations like Etsy to suppress orgonite makers to the point of an unlawful disruption of the artisans’ businesses shows a total lack of understanding of the very life force energy he claims to work with. Welz offers licenses at a cost of $500 per year to be allowed to use the word “orgonite” in online marketplaces.

Orgonite converts negative orgone energy into positive orgone energy. There is no such thing as negative or positive orgone energy. Wilhelm Reich’s term, DOR, or deadly orgone radiation, is unfortunately somewhat confusing. He used it to describe immobilized life force, or stagnating energy. DOR simply means the opposite of OR, or orgone energy, which is always positive and life giving. We use the term DOR to describe any type of deadly radiation, including EMF and nuclear radiation. “POR” or “positive orgone radiation” is not part of Reich’s scientific terminology and appears nowhere in his books.

Orgonite must be grounded or it can transfer deadly energy to you. There is no need to ground orgonite. It works fine on a tabletop, under your pillow, in the ocean, under the ground, or anywhere on Earth. Orgonite never transmits anything other than life force energy.

There are specific dimensions for orgonite, based on sacred geometry. Orgonite’s function is based on the combination of ingredients, not the shape of the device. Pyramids work great, but so do puck shaped towerbusters. As long as the orgonite contains a good amount of fine metal shavings, quartz crystals, and an optional copper coil in a medium of catalyzing resin, it will function properly.

Orgonite can be dangerous if not made correctly. The worst thing orgonite can be is ineffective. It is never dangerous. It’s an extremely simple device with an astoundingly powerful function. Anyone can make it.

After an area has had a lot of orgonite gifted to it, if there is a “whiteout” sky or a lot of chemtrails it means the orgonite isn’t working. A flat, overcast sky is the result of heavy DOR, which causes air pollution to linger and inhibits the formation of coherent and healthy clouds. After orgonite is gifted to a new area, there is often a parasitic backlash against the influx of healthy orgone energy. They will fight back to DORize as hard as they can. If you watch the sky throughout the day, you will see an eventual breakdown of any chemtrails and the process of transmutation will reveal a deepening blue sky and the formation of spiral shaped, and eventually puffy clouds. The sky will then clear. If there are still towers which have not been gifted, the parasites will use them to their full extent to try and undo your work, so just get them later! The “whiteout” is a psy-op to make the gifter feel discouraged, as if his gifts aren’t working. Understand that they will always DORize, and we must continue to make and gift orgonite. It’s a war.

Chembusters, or orgonite cloudbusters, can create cataclysmic weather and should not be used. While Wilhelm Reich’s Cloudbuster could only be operated by a professional and could only be used for short increments of time because of its extreme effects on weather restoration, the orgonite cloudbuster, attributed to Don Croft, also known as the chembuster, is much less powerful. It still does great work to balance the weather over a considerable distance, but in a slower and more natural way that anyone can use regardless of experience with orgone energy tools. The orgonite cloudbuster is just a very large orgonite, which is always beneficial and never harmful.

It’s better to use an environmentally friendly medium, such as plaster or beeswax, rather than polyester resin, when making orgonite. To make powerful orgonite, a catalyzing resin is necessary. You can make devices for your home using other materials, but the effect will be about as strong as what the crystals would produce without being put into a device made with plaster or beeswax. In order to activate the piezoelectric properties of quartz, the crystals must be squeezed upon by the resin as it hardens through the chemical reaction of catalyzation. Orgonite needs to be powerful and durable to last in the environment and take down the dark control grid. This is no time to worry about minutia, like the usage of small amounts of petroleum to bring about sweeping environmental clean-ups. There is no need to demonize materials from the Earth which some corporations use irresponsibly, when we can use them for good.

Orgonite makes some people feel bad and is disagreeable to them. While this may be true, it is not the human being that dislikes the effect. It is the parasite that has attached itself etherically to that human that dislikes it. If you have an intestinal parasite, you will crave the foods it desires, not what’s actually good for you. People who are under heavy mind control and are addicted to DOR (like heavy smart phone users) often cannot handle orgone energy. It is contrary to what they’re used to. They have etheric parasites enjoying a banquet of their negative emotions every day, and these parasites get angry when their food source is diminished, so they may take it out on the human as an etheric attack. It is actually this attack that is disagreeable to the human, but he may misconstrue orgonite as the source of the problem. This is similar to when you detox and feel sick temporarily as the toxins are released from the body. It is not the detox supplement, but the releasing toxins which are creating the unpleasant, and temporary, effect.

In conclusion, I could not imagine a life without orgonite to keep me safe from deadly energies, ensure healthy rainy seasons, keep the air clean, and generally improve my own health and life force energy. It is my sincere hope that having read this article, that you will try out a piece of properly made orgonite, or even make your own. Easy to follow tutorials on orgonite making are available at www.thechembow.com, as well as everything you need to know about how they work and how our environment has experienced a total turnaround since we started gifting orgonite in 2014.

There is no reason to feel helpless or depressed, when the solution to geoengineering and EMF, including the 5G network everyone is so afraid of, is here with us now! Considering the suppression campaign of orgone energy since Wilhelm Reich discovered it, it is no surprise that orgonite is also being suppressed via disinformation campaigns all over the internet. Anyone who has used orgonite and enjoyed its effects would never portray it as potentially dangerous, would avoid making it sound crazy and unscientific, and would never try to stop anyone from experiencing the life changing benefits of something so simple and fun to make at home. With an understanding of the science of orgonite, we can easily debunk the mystical nonsense which has relegated this greatest of technologies to the lunatic fringe and finally make orgonite a household word.

Share the love, gift orgonite

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spacenutspod · 1 year ago

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With our continued failure to discover dark matter particles, it’s worth considering alternatives. While dark matter is the most widely supported model, the alternatives fall into two broad paths. One is that we should look to extended models of general relativity, such as conformal gravity. The other argues we should modify the very nature of Newtonian dynamics. The first approach tends to be popular with theorists since it focuses on an abstract theory in the same vein as Einstein’s original ideas. The second, often known as Modified Newtonian Dynamics, or MoND, tends to be more popular with observational astronomers. MoND has a long history in astronomy. It was first introduced back in the early 1980s by Mordehai Milgrom as a way to explain the rotation curves of galaxies. In our solar system, distant planets orbit the Sun at a slower pace than close planets, in excellent agreement with Newton’s Law of Universal Gravity. But stars in galaxies orbit the galactic center at roughly the same pace regardless of distance. The dark matter explanation is that most of the mass of a galaxy is distributed as a halo around a galaxy, we just can’t see it because dark matter doesn’t interact with light. MoND argues that Newton’s famous F = ma equation is only an approximation that works for larger forces. For extremely small forces, such as the galactic tug of gravity on a star, the acceleration deviates just enough to match the galactic rotation curve. If this sounds like a cludge it kind of is. It violates fundamental physical laws, doesn’t play well with special relativity, and has lots of other problems. But it’s important to keep in mind it was originally proposed as a proof of concept, not a robust theory. So was dark matter in its early years. Rotation curve of the typical spiral galaxy M 33 (yellow and blue points with errorbars) and the predicted one from distribution of the visible matter (white line). The discrepancy between the two curves is accounted for by adding a dark matter halo surrounding the galaxy. Credit: Public domain / Wikipedia One of the reasons for MoND’s lack of popularity is that it isn’t a field theory. Electromagnetism, relativity, quantum theory, and others all treat physical quantities as fields, which allows physicists to apply all sorts of modern mathematical analysis. Since MoND isn’t a field theory, it lacks the kind of global structure that puts it on a level playing field, if you’ll pardon the pun. But there is a variant of MoND known as AQUAL, which stands for A QUAdratic Lagrangian. The predictions of AQUAL are slightly different from MoND, but AQUAL is a field theory, so it’s popular with dark matter contrarians. There is also a relativistic extension of AQUAL known as Tensor–vector–scalar gravity (TeVeS). Although AQUAL isn’t popular in the scientific community, it is a valid testable model. Most of the predictions it makes are also made by dark matter models, but there are a few that differ. One of them is that the rotation curve of a galaxy should have a kink in it as the MoND effect becomes more dominant, and in 2022 this was seen in more than 100 galaxies. Now a study of binary stars seems to confirm AQUAL again. Newtonian gravity vs AQUAL in binary stars. Credit: Chae, Kyu-Hyun Rather than galaxies, this study looked at wide binaries. These are binary stars orbiting each other at large distances. Since the gravitational attraction between the stars is small, Newtonian gravity and AQUAL make slightly different predictions about their motion. And since dark matter doesn’t have a strong effect on the scale of star systems, it predicts the stars should follow Newtonian motion. Taking data from the Gaia Space Telescope, the author analyzed the orbital motion of 26,500 wide-binary systems and compared the gravitational accelerations of the stars with their orbital separations. At larger accelerations, the orbits agree with both AQUAL and Newtonian gravity, but at smaller accelerations, the binary orbits deviate from Newton exactly as AQUAL predicts. In other words, for thousands of binary systems, AQUAL is a better model of their motion than Newton. This would seem to contradict dark matter models. This is just one study, and the author is careful not to make bold claims. But it’s a very interesting result. Dark matter remains the better theory for things like galaxy clustering and gravitational lensing effects, but it seems clear AQUAL is a challenger that can’t be easily ignored. Reference: Chae, Kyu-Hyun. “Breakdown of the Newton-Einstein Standard Gravity at Low Acceleration in Internal Dynamics of Wide Binary Stars.” The Astrophysical Journal 952 (2023): 128. The post Evidence for Modified Gravity Found in the Motions of Binary Stars appeared first on Universe Today.

#space #astronomy #news #science

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scepticaladventure · 6 years ago

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28 Fresh Perspectives Needed 13Sep18

Introduction I have three motivations in writing this series of essays. The first is to improve my own understanding through research, contemplation and organizing my ideas by writing them. The second is to be able to share this journey with others in a plain-English format, just in case anyone is interested or amused by this (which is not the case for my wife, friends and relatives!). My third reason is the hope of provoking fresh thinking in areas that seem to me to be calling out for new insights and answers.

I think modern cosmology is in trouble. 95-98% of the Universe has gone missing and cannot be found. Cosmologists claim to understand the history of the Universe, even before the so-called Big Bang, but cannot explain the motion of stars in spiral galaxies or why the Universe seems to be expanding at an accelerating rate, or why its geometry seems to be so flat. We can’t even deeply explain the motion of a simple Foucault pendulum here on Earth. And our model for light is an unsatisfactory pastiche of conflicting ideas. Paradoxes persist. How long will it take before we agree – we seem to have lost the path, it should not be as hard as this, we have missed something, we have failed to fully understand something fundamental.

So I have gone back through the foundations of modern physics with an open but skeptical mind. It has been a fascinating journey.

Here are my conclusions: 1. Our model for light is clumsy, old fashioned, contradictory and severely limiting. It needs a fresh look. Wave-particle duality is just a label for something we don’t properly understand. 2. The aether theory isn’t dead, it is just sleeping. It ran into problems and was bypassed, shelved and ignored. But maybe Lorentz, Sagnac and others were onto something that needs a fresh and further look. 3. Special Relativity is a work of genius and uncovered some fundamental aspects of Nature. But it rests on three postulates that may not be always, everywhere and entirely valid. 4. The issue of where does inertia comes from in the first place needs some deep consideration. 5. General Relativity is brilliantly successful because it recognizes that both time and the speed of light are affected by gravity. It is also a clever and powerful model that brings a whole lot of new mathematics into play. But for all that it is just a model. 6. If you add the insights of Special Relativity and the fact that gravity slows the speed of light/time back into classical physics you can successfully model, quantify and predict all of the so-called proofs of General Relativity. This shows that General Relativity is an excellent way of looking at certain aspects of Nature, but it is not the only way of understanding Nature. 7. Restricting our viewpoints restricts our understanding and progress. We need some fresh perspectives.

The Cone Here is a parable. Consider a solid cone made out of some hard shiny material. Viewed from one end it will look like a disc. Viewed from the other end it will still look like a disc, but with some indications that it has a symmetrical three dimensional nature and maybe a pointy tip. Viewed side on it will look like a triangle, again with some suggestions of curvature but this time from side to side. Which view is correct? The answer is that all three views are correct, but none is completely correct. Insisting that one view is correct and ignoring the other views is to limit understanding of the true nature of the cone.

I think it is the same with General Relativity. Insisting that it is the only correct way of interpreting the Universe is to limit our chances of developing a deeper understanding.

The Rise of the Metric Approach to Gravity There are various ways to try to describe physics involving gravity. It is clear that four dimensional spacetime is needed and that the lessons of Special Relativity need to be included. Furthermore, the fact that gravity slows down the speed of light and the rate of time points to the need to allow for flexibility in the time dimension. So a flat Minkowski spacetime is not entirely adequate. But this is where the great divide comes in. You can choose to follow Einstein and make use of a fully curved spacetime model, or not.

If you do choose Einstein’s geometric approach then you can regard this as just a model – as Einstein himself did – or you can go further and choose to regard curved spacetime as some sort of fundamental reality. This last step gained popularity after Einstein died, promulgated by luminaries such as Misner, Thorne and Wheeler in the United States and Stephen Hawking in the United Kingdom.

Necessity for Full Spacetime Curvature? N.B. In this essay I will again be making references to a heavyweight textbook on gravity by Charles Misner, Kip Thorne and John Wheeler (MTW): “Gravitation” C W Misner, K S Thorne, J A Wheeler Freeman Press, 1970 ISBN 0-7167-0344

MTW have played a major role in promoting the idea that gravity is nothing more than spacetime curvature. Einstein’s own approach was regarded as a curiosity by many scientists for the first forty years of its life but from the middle of the 20th century it gradually assumed the ascendency. Whereas Einstein regarded his full curvature approach to be a useful tool, MTW and others reinterpreted his approach and helped to create the modern view that gravity is just an illusion created by full spacetime curvature.

MTW do not have an open mind on the subject. On p1066 they say “Among all bodies of physical law none has ever been found that is simpler or more beautiful than Einstein’s geometric theory of gravity; nor has any theory of gravity been discovered that is more compelling”. On p1067 they say “For any adequate description of gravity, look to a metric theory”. On p 421 they say “Mass-energy curves space is the central principle of gravity”. On p429 they praise General Relativity because “It describes gravity entirely in terms of geometry; most of its competitors do not”. And John Wheeler is often quoted as saying “Matter tells spacetime how to curve and curved spacetime tell matter how to move.”

Clifford M Will was a student of Kip Thorne at Caltech and later became a leading professor of physics, specializing in General Relativity. I will use quotes from his online article “The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment” June 2014, SpringerLink, and his overview “Was Einstein Right? A Centenary Assessment” 33 pages, 8 figures, published in General Relativity and Gravitation: A Centennial Perspective, eds. A. Ashtekar, B. Berger, J. Isenberg and M. A. H. MacCallum (Cambridge University Press), 2015. Abridged version at arXiv:1403.7377.

Will presents the Einstein Equivalence Principle and Strong Equivalence Principle in confusing ways, with each principle containing other principles. Will then says that the equivalence principles are the heart and soul of gravitational theory, “for it is possible to argue convincingly that if they are valid, then gravitation must be a ‘curved spacetime’ phenomenon.” In other words, the effects of gravity must be equivalent to the effects of living in a curved spacetime.

I think that to whether “the effects of gravity must be equivalent to the effects of living in a curved spacetime curvature” is true or not depending on what it meant by ‘equivalent’. If the author means “can be satisfactorily modeled by” I would happily agree. If the author means we live in a curved spacetime reality and gravity does not exist, then I think that he has gone too far. Further than Einstein ever went and further than is reasonable.

The Parametrized Post Newtonian Formalism The Parameterized Post-Newtonian Framework (PPN) was developed over 50 years by illustrious physicists such as Eddington, Robertson, Schiff, Nordtvedt and Will. The PPN formalism adds ten generic parameters to a basic version of General Relativity. The parameters can be adjusted so that the PPN can represent a whole variety of competing geometric models of gravity, including subtle variations of General Relativity itself. The idea is then to use experimental results to put limits on the parameters as a way of weeding out the range of theories and preventing new weeds from taking hold.

Theories subject to this treatment include Einstein’s General Relativity (1915), Whitehead (1922), one of Bergman’s (1968) scalar-tensor theories, one of Nordstrom’s theories, theories by Birkhoff (1943), Dicke-Brans-Jordan (1961, 1959), Ni (1970, 1972) and many others.

Suffice it to say that plain vanilla General Relativity complies neatly with these tests and the other models struggle.

The work by Will also covers a lot of metric theories, classified into General Relativity, scalar-tensor theories (of which the Jordan–Fierz–Brans–Dicke theory is a good example), vector-tensor theories and scalar-vector-tensor theories. Let me quote from the second of the Will references mentioned above: • A number of theories fall into the class of “prior-geometric” theories, with absolute elements such as a flat background metric in addition to the physical metric. Most of these theories predict “preferred-frame” effects that have been tightly constrained by observations. An example is Rosen’s bi-metric theory. • A large number of alternative theories of gravity predict gravitational wave emission substantially different from that of general relativity, in strong disagreement with observations of the binary pulsar. • Scalar-tensor modifications of general relativity have become very popular in unification schemes such as string theory, and in cosmological model building. Because the scalar fields could be massive, the potentials in the post-Newtonian limit could be modified by Yukawa-like terms. • Theories that also incorporate vector fields have attracted recent attention, in the spirit of the Extension of the Standard Model (of sub-atomic particles), as models for violations of Lorentz invariance in the gravitational sector, and as potential candidates to account for phenomena such as galaxy rotation curves without resorting to dark matter.

Again Will uses a range of experimental results and concludes that plain vanilla General Relativity complies neatly with these tests and the other models do not.

My problem with all this work is not its intention, but the way it is carried out. MTW, Will and Nordtvedt make up the rules, act as prosecutor, select the evidence, interpret the evidence and act as jury and judge. If they encounter a problem in a theory they allow no attempt to fix it. They simply bayonet the wounded theory, declare it dead and buried, and move on to the next.

Einstein struggled for ten years to develop his General Relativity model, with many twists and turns. He produced an initial calculation for the light bending effect that was half the final result. He argued for, then against, and finally for the existence of gravitational waves. He introduced a cosmological constant and then called it a mistake. So it may be a bit harsh and possibly premature to kill off other models at the first sign of a problem.

Models with Backgrounds The antagonism by MTW towards alternate theories of gravity and alternate interpretations of Einstein’s approach shows up in the discussion by MTW of attempts to view gravity as a standard type of field situated in a flat spacetime background.

This approach has been developed and explored by notable theorists such as Gupta, Kraichman, Thirring, Feyman, Weinberg and Deser (see MTW p436). It offers one of several routes to the field equations of Einstein’s General Relativity.

One version (Fierz and Pauli 1939) borrowed from quantum theory and envisages gravity as occurring via the exchange of gravitons – hypothetical zero rest mass particles with a spin number of 2. MTW claim that by the time this approach is fully developed the original flat spacetime has become unobservable. MTW dismiss the theory (p437) because it is silent about the emergence of the Universe from an initial singularity - the Big Bang Theory. Hence MTW dismiss a serious attempt to bring together the two pillars of modern physics because it is silent about something else that they like.

MTW start their more general discussion of models with backgrounds by stating that any flat background must be unobservable (p424). This is the same point of view put to Lorentz by Einstein in relation to Special Relativity.

Einstein did not deny the possibility of a background that may or may not correspond to a lumiferous aether. He just argued that if it cannot show up in Michelson-Morley type experiments it must be unobservable and hence not useful.

MTW praise General Relativity for being free of any ‘prior geometry’, and criticize any competitors which admit this as a possibility. I think they have a point because I think that all geometry is a man-made overlay and hence has no prior reality. In fact no reality at all except in our own minds. But I think that that agreeing that there is no prior geometry is not quite the same as agreeing that there is no background. It might just mean that the background has no prior geometry.

I think this subtle difference is vitally and fundamentally important.

In my view, Newton’s rotating bucket, the Foucault pendulum and the Sagnac interferometer all readily distinguish reference frames which are rotating or accelerating from ones which are not. The Cosmic Microwave Background does the same. Conversely, Einstein’s attempt to explain why some objects demonstrate rotational phenomena and others do not by imposing boundary conditions on his cosmological models was a failure. Einstein thought so anyway, even though it suits many modern cosmologists to disagree.

So why do MTW show such antagonism to the idea of a cosmological background? I think it might be because they conflate it with ‘prior geometry’. However, to their credit they attempt to clarify their language. On p 429 they say “By ‘prior geometry’ one means any aspect of the geometry of spacetime that is fixed immutably, i.e. that cannot be changed by changing the distribution of gravitating sources”.

So what about a background geometry that is affected by the distribution of gravitating sources in the Universe? This echoes the argument put forward by Ernst Mach towards the end of the 19th century. Einstein admired the idea so much that he dubbed it “Mach’s Principle.” (Einstein endeavored to incorporate the idea into his theories all his life, but eventually concluded that he had not been successful.) If the background is given a Machian interpretation then I think it has to be taken very seriously.

There seems to be a confused belief that the idea of a background conflicts with something that Einstein called the Principle of General Covariance. This principle states that the outcome of physical experiments does not depend on the choice of reference frame in which to view them. In other words, physics is agnostic to reference frames invented by observers for their own convenience.

This principle is entirely reasonable, but has little to do with the fact that some reference frames are more equal than others. For example, frames that are not accelerating or rotating do not contain spurious forces deflecting unattached test particles all over the place.

It is robustly true that the physical outcomes are the same whatever reference frame you chose to use – it is just that the ease of describing what is going on them is vastly different depending on the frame you happen to choose to describe them in. Choose your frame right and you do not have to invent ‘fictitious’ forces to balance the books.

An example of the type of effort that I admire is a modeling approach developed by W T Ni in 1970 and 1972 (see MTW p1070). This has a background geometry and treats gravity as a scalar field. MTW agree that the theory satisfies the equivalence principle (which version is not clear), and that the model is self-consistent and complete. But then they say “If the solar system were at rest in the ‘rest frame of the Universe’, the theory would agree with all experiments to date – except possibly for the expansion of the Universe. But the motion of the solar system through the Universe leads to serious disagreement with experiment (Will and Nordtvedt 1972)”.

The alleged fatal flaw comes from work by Will in 1971 that suggests that the force between two massive objects will depend on the way in which they are travelling through the background metric. This is calculated to create a twice-a-day fluctuation in the tides on Earth and also to tidal fluctuations within the Earth that conflicts with the experimental evidence. This leads Will to claim that the theory of Whitehead (1922) and of Ni (1972) cannot be correct. But is Will correct?

When Galileo presented his model of a spinning Earth orbiting a stationary Sun, the wise men of the day calculated that the tangential speed of the Earth’s surface could be anything up to 1600km/hour and said that Galileo’s model could not possibly be true because no bird could fly that fast in order to keep up. It was not an unreasonable point because this was in the days prior to Torricelli and hence there was not yet a concept of the atmosphere being a thin layer coating the earth with no viscous drag where it meets the vacuum of space. Likewise Will’s objection could be perfectly reasonable and clever, but nevertheless wrong.

Since General Relativity and modern physics generally cannot explain the enormous anomaly in the motion of stars in the discs of all spiral galaxies (without inventing hypothetical dark matter) there is clearly something occurring that is not well explained by the conventional paradigm. So it may be unwise to be too definite about what is right and what is wrong at this stage. What if the type of thinking put forward by Ni resolves the galaxy rotation curve crisis?

The Fabric of Spacetime? It is common to hear expressions such as “the fabric of spacetime”, and “spacetime tells matter how to move”. It is also common to see diagrams with spacetime depicted as a curved or distorted rubber sheet with dimples around massive objects forcing the path of freely moving bodies into curves and orbits.

This is a bit unfortunate. It tends to create the impression that spacetime is a real thing, an actual entity. That moving objects are deflected because they hit a bump in the road.

Spacetime is a just way of defining places and moments, lengths and times in a satisfactory way so we can describe what is going on. We do this sort of thing all the time, but we need to be careful not to get confused between our imagined constructs and actual reality.

For example, we have an agreed way of assigning lines of latitude and longitude to the surface of the Earth. This creates a two dimensional grid. But it is not real. You cannot see it, touch it, taste it, smell it or hear it. You cannot detect it with any instruments. It does not interact with matter in any shape or form. The motion of everything on Earth is oblivious to the imaginary grid that we have imagined and agreed upon for our own convenience of reference.

It is the same with spacetime. Curved or not. It is just a reference frame that we overlay onto physical reality to make it easier to talk about what is going on. If it proves convenient to use a warped geometry then use that. If some other representation is more convenient then use that one instead. It makes no difference to actual reality.

Imaginary reference frames are useful for describing physical systems. That is all. Spacetime does not exist as a thing in its own right, any more than the lines of latitude and longitude exist on the surface of the Earth. Spacetime curvature does not tell matter how to move any more than the lines of latitude and longitude tell ships and planes how to move, or ducks how to migrate. It is important not to become confused between descriptions of reality that we happen to find useful and reality itself.

When someone says “matter tells spacetime how to curve and spacetime curvature tells matter how to move” we should not take the words too literally. It would be better to remind ourselves that we have imposed an imaginary and somewhat arbitrary reference frame across the physical system we are trying to describe and that for some purposes we find it convenient to model the effects of gravity by using a warped four dimensional framework.

I know that General Relativity can be recast in terms so generic that the convenience of coordinates can be dispensed with all together. However I do not think this alters my point.

I am also familiar with the argument that goes as follows. By applying geometry to the surface of the Earth we can discover that two dimensional geometry which is locally Euclidean no longer works on a larger scale, thus revealing that the surface of the Earth is a curved manifold in three dimensional space. Similarly, applying four dimensional geometry which is locally Lorentzian on a larger scale reveals that spacetime curvature is necessary to account for physical dynamics in the presence of gravity. I would agree with this if I thought that Einstein’s Equivalence Principle was literally true. But I don’t. I think that gravity can be mimicked by a linear acceleration to a certain degree, and that it is possible to build clever mathematical models based on this fact. But is gravity, the most dominant force in the Universe, just an illusion created by a quirk of geometry? I don’t think so.

Is General Relativity Perfect? Yes, you can get rid of gravity by imagining spacetime is curved. Yes this is brilliant stuff. Yes this produces a small number of remarkable (very small) predictions that turn out to be true. And yes it is possible to build innumerable wonderful cosmological models using curved spacetime geometries. But that is not conclusive proof that the modern version of General Relativity is the only way to look at the Universe, the best way to look at the Universe, or even the most convenient way to look at the Universe.

General Relativity is very hard to use and I think the results of its over complicated mathematics throw up more questions than they answer. And while I am being heretical, I may as well produce a list of criticisms. In my naive opinion, the modern version of General Relativity: 1. is based on a Principle of Equivalence which is just a mathematical assumption 2. elevates spacetime to a status it does not deserve 3. does not explain why matter, stress and energy distort spacetime 4. does not explain the origins of linear or rotational inertia 5. does not explain why matter has mass 6. is so complicated that it enables mathematicians to come up with a whole range of solutions which have no correspondence in Nature 7. creates red herrings that waste everyone’s time 8. has not helped with the dilemmas of missing Cold Dark Matter and Dark Energy 9. has predictions which can be accounted for in other ways 10. obscures, bypasses or overshadows a lot of fundamental issues that deserve more attention.

In many ways, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. A century after General Relativity was produced, most astronomers do not use it except in special circumstances such as gravitational lensing and black holes. In day-to-day discussions they just use a post-Newtonian approximation. And although Einstein and modern ‘metricists’ seem to be averse to any ‘a priori’ geometry in the Universe, astronomers nevertheless find it convenient to have agreed reference frames for the Solar System, the Milky Way and the wider Universe. Are they are instinctively using something that has physical significance?

Spatial Curvature on a Cosmological Scale Einstein’s General Relativity model requires mass/energy to warp spacetime. Its equations involve mass/stress/energy tensor warping the 4x4 spacetime metric tensor in all of its sixteen components (six of which are duplicates due to symmetry).

Suppose there are three spacecraft at rest with respect to each other and the cosmic microwave background. Connect them by laser beams and measure the angles between the three beams. The beams form a triangle. If the interior angles always add up to 180 degrees, then spacetime is flat. If the sum of the angles is more or less than that, then space has positive or negative curvature.

As far as we can tell, on a very large spatial scale our Universe is flat. Very flat. Parallel lines in intergalactic space will never meet. But this requires a very particular value for the universal stress energy tensor. Theorists have been struggling for nearly a century to explain why this might be so. It would be a remarkable coincidence if the average mass/stress/energy in our Universe happens to be exactly the right amount for universal spacetime to have neither positive nor negative curvature on a macro scale.

So Why is our Universe so Flat? The Einstein-Friedmann-Robertson-Walker models of the Universe involve solutions for Einstein’s equations based on the assumption that the Universe is more or less uniformly filled with mass/stress/energy, a bit like a perfect fluid. The equations have solutions which have positive curvature (like a sphere in 3D), negative curvature (like a hyperbolic surface in 3D) or zero curvature (i.e. flat) depending on the energy density measured by the omnipresent mass/stress/energy tensor.

But observations show the Universe is flat. So how did the Universe come up with exactly the right amount of mass/stress/energy to arrive at this special case? Theorists have come up with all sorts of suggestions, but it is still a mystery.

I have a much simpler answer. The Universe is flat because is has always been flat and that is the only thing it can be. The non-flat Friedmann solutions are just artifacts of the model and the assumptions used in obtaining its generic solutions. Not all aspects of the solutions have to correspond to reality.

When I read the debate between cosmologists about possible values for the cosmological constant I cannot help but be reminded of the debate between medieval theologians about how many angels can dance on the head on a pin. All very clever, but maybe not very useful.

Consider the Cartesian map analogy again. It is possible to map the surface of the earth onto a two dimensional surface by allowing the lines of longitude to move further and further apart as the distance from the equator increases. This is very useful, especially when reproducing maps on paper. But it produces singularities at the north and south poles. It is no good worrying about the meaning of these singularities and what bizarre things might be happening at the poles because the singularities do not exist in reality – they are just an artifact of the mathematical approach used to build the two dimensional model.

Likewise, you can waste time worrying why the Universe is flat, or you can just accept that the non-flat mathematical solutions are an artifact of a particular set of solutions to a peculiar model of the Universe based on a peculiar approach to describing physics.

I say peculiar model of the Universe because it seems to me that the Einstein-Friedmann-Robertson-Walker models of the Universe rest on some doubtful assumptions. Friedmann was not making assumptions summarizing actual experimental observations – he was just making gross simplifications in order to be able to get a handle on the mathematics. I don’t think the Universe is anything like a homogeneous perfect fluid. The more we look the more we find macro patterns in its structure. Huge super-clusters of galaxies, filaments, voids and walls. The analogy to the particles in a fluid are the galaxies. However, unlike the molecules in a fluid, the space between the galaxies contains a lot of intergalactic dust, neutrinos and photons. Furthermore galaxies collide with each other in ways that are totally different to the ways that molecules collide in a fluid. And the list of differences goes on.

I think the large scale geometry of our Universe is so flat because it was never curved. Cosmological curvature is our idea – not Nature’s.

Conclusion Inspired by Einstein’s great work there have been literally dozens of other models of gravitation over the last hundred years or so.

At first gravitation theory was a theorist’s paradise but an experimenter’s purgatory. Since the 1960’s however, developments in space technology and astronomy have created the ability to test many aspects of this work. The clear winner has been Einstein’s original theory. So much so that many scientists regard spacetime curvature not as a model of what is going on in nature, but as a fundamental new reality.

I think this is a mistake. I think that General Relativity is a very clever and successful model, but a model none-the-less. There is plenty that we do not yet understand properly about the Universe, how it works and how it evolved. Refusing to consider alternative approaches has the strong likelihood of unnecessarily limiting our understanding and delaying the next generation of breakthroughs.

General Relativity leaves key questions unanswered, e.g. in relation to the origins of inertia and the dynamics of spiral galaxies. The fact that 98% of the Universe required by theory cannot actually be found may be trying to tell us something - we have missed something fundamental. We have got off track. Something is wrong somewhere.

The current orthodoxy is a cage to our thinking and it deserves to be rattled and shaken. And finally a message to young scientists – please do not stop asking questions and do not stop questioning what they tell you, especially if it seems fudged.

A quote from a lecture Einstein gave in 1921: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain they do not refer to reality.”

#science #physics #Einstein #General Relativity #cosmology #gravity #theories of gravity #hereticalphysics

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