Information physics, and natural signal response theory

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A Natural Signal Information Physics ?
There have been a number of attempts at developing an Information Physics, though maybe none yet have been developed far. But an information physics would be entirely consistent with the classical action-at-distance signal-response information physics of William Gilbert, like Newton's attraction physics, so it is possible to construct a general natural-signal information physics that takes all objects in the universe as being one or more of three general classes of information objects, namely;
1. Objects that are different kinds of Natural Signals emitted by some source objects and naturally carrying some information regarding their source and their journey from their source.
2. Objects that are Signal Emitters or sources of some such Natural Signals.
3. Objects that are Signal Responders and respond to some information from some Natural Signals such as by motion directed towards or away from those signals apparent source as seems the case with eg gravity and magnetism. And it may be that objects that emit some one kind of Natural Signal, may also respond to that kind of signal as seems the case with gravity and magnetism for example and maybe some other physical forces.
So it may be of some interest to now consider such a general signal information physics concerning natural signals as communicating information, starting from a consideration of the basics of signal-response theory.

The basics of signal-response theory

The basics of signal-response theory can be taken as being simply that any body can be a signal, relative to some observer body that can respond to it. And that any body can be an observer, relative to some signal body to which it can respond. So in basic signal-response theory a response can take any form and can be to any property or properties of a signal that can be taken as carrying data or information, so that signal responses may or may not reflect the basic nature of the signal itself but might just eg reflect any aspect of the signal which might involve anything that had previously happened to the signal. Responses to signals are to the signal, and only indirectly or approximately are they responses to signal sources subject to appropriate signal noise concerns. Though it may not normally happen in nature any signal can in principle be made to give any response, including producing any other signal as a response, so that it can be possible for example to see sounds or to hear colours. And any signal needs to be interpreted to show what it signifies, but any signal can be interpreted differently by different interpreters. And a signal emitter causing a response in a signal receiver, may or may not also involve the signal receiver being able to cause a similar reverse response in the signal emitter. But for an information physics what is significant is what information a particular signal gives to a specific physical detector and NOT what information that signal may give to a human. So how any physical object responds to a magnet indicates what information that physical object received from that magnet, irrespective of how it may have received such information. And a detector demonstrates its detection of a signal by its response to the signal, so that a signal receipt by a detector with no signal response by it is no signal detection by it. Any detector responding to a signal confirms by its response that the signal received met the information requirements for that response whatever such information requirement might be. Information in any signal may inform about the signal source to a greater or lesser extent reflecting its information history since leaving its source.

The basics of a signal-response physics

A signal-response physics like William Gilbert's, partly incorporated into Newton's physics, is necessarily an information physics, which no kind of push-physics can really be. But natural physical actions must surely have some general basic causal relations involving some Occam simplicity, though nature can have some complexities as due to several simplicities adding to a relative complexity. [But the Occam's Razor principle is not just about the 'simplest' being better, it is about the least number of assumptions being better. As in assuming that one coin-flip will be heads is better than assuming that both of two coin-flips will be heads, that is in fact more probable by a 50% chance against a 25% chance.] And of course any claimed natural physical signal responses would need to also accord with any relevant physical observation and/or experiment.

Unlike any Cartesian-style push-physics where a cause supplies exactly the energy for an effect, signal-response theory generally does not assume any one specific mathematics, eg signal strength or signal frequency need not always decrease as the square of the distance from its source and a response strength might be fixed over some range of signal strengths or might vary with more than one aspect of apparent signal strength or frequency and apparent signal directionality even of multiply refracted signals or signals from relocated sources. Of course particular pieces or forms of natural signal-response are likely to normally actually follow some specific mathematics, as many natural signals may normally avoid any significant transit modification. So in nature gravity and magnetism do show that different bodies may respond in regular ways to different natural signals, but this need not follow how modern technology can link almost any response however complex to almost any signal however simple - as also can the human mind. And in many cases of natural physical action no direct signal detection may be possible and so can only be inferred from observed response reactions. And it is clearly the case that signal-response phenomena especially can involve small-causes-big 'Butterfly Effects'.

Some or all existent objects certainly emit natural signals that indicate their colour, magnetism, mass, motion or other properties of the signal emitting object. Emitted signals indicate or reflect properties of their emitters, so that responses of other objects to received signals are responses to properties of signal emitters and are caused by the signal emission to the extent that the signal does not get modified in transmission or by signal reception. In signal theory signals are basically anything to which some signal detector can produce some response, so that signal-response physical actions must involve two separate related phenomena being signal and response. If light is taken as being a signal, then different physical systems might be expected to show some different responses to light. This appears to be the case with at least some light-related phenomena like reflection and refraction. It has even been shown that punching holes in thin plates can increase OR decrease the amount of light that appears to penetrate a plate, see Physics World light And while in nature there are many cases of bodies affected by light as a source of heat or energy, there are many cases in nature and in technology of bodies responding to light as a signal. Of course Newton concluded that colour was a property of light itself and was not just a property of illuminated objects modifying light, which he claimed 'to have proven definitely with a crucial experiment'. But unlike William Gilbert earlier, Newton failed to publish the exact details of his experiment and so did not help with correct replication by other scientists. And also later Newton allowed that light itself might respond to some signals from objects or their atoms as to gravitational signals.

The nature of light itself

In any physics that does not take light as being a signal, light impacting different physical systems may be taken as being different behaviours of light itself. This can lead to taking reflection, refraction, diffraction, photoelectric emission, Compton emission etcetera as being light behaviours. And some of these apparent light behaviours can be taken as evidence for light itself being an ether wave, a quantal particle, or either or both. But in a physics that takes light as being a signal, light impacting different physical systems can be taken as evoking different detector responses. This leads to taking reflection, refraction, diffraction, photoelectric emission, Compton emission etcetera as being responses to light signals. And some of these being responses can be taken as giving no evidence for light itself being of any specific nature if the nature of responses is not fully determined by the basic nature of the signals involved.

Natural responses to natural signals

In nature responses generally may not be determined by the complete data of any signal, but may reflect only some one property or few properties of a signal. Hence some detectors can give digital quantal responses to some natural continuous signals, or give analog continuous response to natural digital signals. See eg Digital to Analog Converter or Analog to Digital Converter - though these sources may not be the best. And the different magnetic responses (as attraction, orientation and magnetization) to the same signal can operate at very different ranges, so that apparent 'signal range' can clearly be less a property of the signal than an indicator of response sensitivities.

Modern 'signal processing' is predominantly electronic and often involves systems using designed program calculation methods in producing signal responses of any designable form irrespective of the signal involved, but other physical systems can respond in various ways to different signals using only basic physical responses. And it is perhaps that kind of non-designed signal response that is of more fundamental relevance to physics. Hence mechanical clocks can respond to an analog spring pressure with ratchet-gear digital responses. (And even computational physics can be basically simple resting on 0/1 or On/Off states, so that eg atoms for some phenomena involving one signal may have two states allowing two different responses. Some recently have even proposed a physics on that basis like the New Kind of Science of Stephen Wolfram.) And in his 'Opticks' Newton considered light reflection and refraction as possibly light itself responding to signals from atoms, see Light.

Response to signals might often be proportional to signal strength or intensity and might involve signal strength thresholds. For example, it might be that some moth shows no response to light below some low-threshold light intensity, but shows an attraction response to light intensities above that low-threshold intensity and then shows a repulsive response to light intensities above some high-threshold intensity. And somewhat similar threshold signal-intensity effects might also apply to signal-response in forces like gravity or the strong nuclear force, see our string theory and gravity sections.

And the 'butterfly effect' loved by time-travel fiction theorists, which is a real problem as for computer modelling, rests on a basic of signal-response or remote-control information physics that a small low-energy low-information signal can cause a big high-energy high-information response. See Butterfly Effect. A similar class of issue to the Archemedes 'Law of the Lever' issue, and to a tiny germ killing an elephant or to a small button-press making a flying remote-control drone land on the ground. Or indeed, as with rats and plague, some cause and its effect may be mediated by something smaller.

Information in physics

Signal theory generally locates information, either intentional information or unintentional natural information, in signals - but a basically non-information physics tends to trying to locate information either in physical bodies themselves or in ill-defined 'observers'. So a range of issues can arise such as ;
1. physical bodies either do or do not carry some natural information before an observer observes ?
2. signals either do or do not carry some natural information before they are detected ?
3. physical bodies either do or do not carry some natural information before they emit signals ?
4. signals either do or do not carry natural information reflecting the full nature of their source ?
5. information persists until something changes it or destroys it.
These and other related issues have not always been properly addressed by physics theories to date. A signal physics may seem better able to handle this, though no doubt non-signal image theories of a signal theory would be compatible also.

Persistence of Information

With the controvertial idea of 'particle entanglement' it is widely claimed wrongly that some related particles can remain themselves 'connected' over long distances and over time. The reality is that particles whose properties were created together relatedly, will retain their property relation for some time even if the particles become seperated in space. Their property relations can remain connected without the particles being in any way connected. Related-creation particles retain their related property relations WITHOUT the particles remaining in any way connected. There is no 'entanglement', only some information retention since information persists till something changes it, as uniform motion in a straight line persists till some force changes it. The 'entanglement' idea is a ridiculous misinterpretation of some experiments actually involving information persistence. To unify classical causal mechanics and probabilistic quantum mechanics, the quantum mechanics 'measurement problem' is better taken as a signal theory issue shown by Peter Morgan 2021 who basically shows that their two sets of mathematics are compatible or image mathematics. But some may try to accept a signal theory maths while not accepting a signal theory physics, as many 17th century physicists accepted Newtonian maths while rejecting its physics in favour of a Cartesian physics not really compatible with it.

All forces as signals

It is of course possible that all physical forces may work by natural signal response, as proposed first by William Gilbert for magnetism, electricity and gravity. And the apparent-contact push force could be a short-range proximity-signal force action-at-short-distance involving no actual contact or push. This would allow of a natural signal information physics 'theory of everything'.

Responses to signals can involve issues like signal thresholds, response times, signal noise, excitation states, conditional response and signal summation. Depending on the particular signal response parameters involved, signal response systems may also be capable of looping or of hanging. And for some signal response systems a numbers of factors may vary the probability of some signal giving some response. Avoiding the use of signal theory, current physics struggles poorly to explain much.

And while most modern physics theory may have no natural place for time, natural signal information theory physics in fundamentally involving response to signals does fundamentally involve time as a consequence. What basically distinguishes a response event from a signal event is simply time, with signals being causes and responses being subsequent effects. If an attraction response cannot precede an attraction signal, then the universe is not time reversible and has one-direction time inbuilt. Many other physics theories by default predict a time reversibility that is quite contrary to many confirmed experiments and observation.

Newton's gravity mathematics works well for the orbitings of planets and moons, though for bodies to be attracted to the actual location of other gravitational bodies by signal rays directly emitted by them would generally seem to require either fixed relative locations or signals having infinite velocity or instantaneous response. So basically Newton demonstrated, and many experiments since have confirmed, that objects respond to gravity from other bodies as though gravity signals travel at a speed much greater than the speed of light. Hence moving-body gravity does not seem to show speed-of-light propagation aberration delays. Objects give a gravity response to a moving body that is not directed to where the body was when light left that body but to a position ahead of that. The same seems to hold also for electric and magnetic forces. One possible explanation of this fact may be that gravity, electric and magnetic signals actually propagate at a speed greater than the speed of light. But several other explanations have been suggested. One possible explanation for this observed effect suggested by William Gilbert attraction theory could be that response to gravity, electric and magnetic signals may involve a signal anticipation mechanism (akin to eg anticipator thermostats). So a simple mechanism for this (tending to cancel at least some of the normal delay effect of a signal taking time to travel) could be response requiring a set of multiple digital signals and its directionality being to the last of the set ? - as below with a response needing a set of three gravitons ;

Basically it is possible for some signal response to include an effective signal prediction without it needing any actual signal prediction, and the above digital-signal anticipation mechanism could work both at a macroscopic averaged level and at the microscopic quantal level. And there could also be response differences to approaching/receding signal source motions besides response to static-source signals. Of course alternative anticipatory signal response mechanisms are conceivable, but anticipatory signal response mechanisms would involve specific testable predictions for astronomy and physics. Hence the above mechanism could show different response effects at high or low gravitation intensities, and could also of course involve the effect varying with the direction and angle of the motion trajectory. The direction of signal reception could be set to directly force the direction of response. Hence if gravity response has minimum and maximum response times then more than 3 digital signals received in the minimum time might give a 3-signal response or some other second gravity response law, and less than 3 signals received in the maximum response time might give a 3-signal response or some other third gravity response law so that gravity might at different gravity strengths involve three gravity laws rather than one and give a gravity maths nearer Einstein's than Newton's though in a signalised Gilbert-Newton attraction physics. Clearly experiments in gravity extremes could resolve this, and similar effects might also apply to other physical forces. And if response requires recieving a minimum of maybe 3 digital signals within some time period and disregards any extra signals received in that time period, then response would not increase with closeness to source as maybe like the nuclear strong force and generally some forces need not decrease with distance equally at all distances ?

Of course generally natural physical emissions including perhaps light and gravity signals should be emitted in some direction with some velocity in that direction, but also maybe generally with additionally a velocity component that reflects any velocity present in the emitter. Testing for such might present problems, especially if one velocity is usually much smaller than the other. There are related consequences for the emitter on an 'action and reaction are equal and opposite' basis, and other consequences if an emission does not involve such 'velocity-carrying'. And motion velocity or acceleration of bodies may confer properties on them that motion direction does not, though measurement is generally direction specific and direction dependent.

The 3-signals signal anticipation mechanism given above gives apparent faster-than-light response and could perhaps also explain both averaged macroscopic-body orbits and quantised microscopic-body orbits. At macroscopic distances emitted signals will tend to being larger numbers of signals averaged, but at microscopic distances emitted signals will tend to be infrequent individual signals. If receiver response to a signal-emitting object orbiting around it requires the receiver sending a directional response signal, that signal will be received by the orbiting emitter (and not miss the orbiting emitter) only if it is orbiting at some specific appropriate velocity so that possible orbits would be confined to some specific quantal values and so give a new quantal atomic orbits explanation. And such quantal attraction motions would add to an object's non-quantal continuous inertial motion. Hence it is possible to build a gravitating robot or a missile/asteroid detector with such anticipatory 'faster-than-light' response. And, if fully programmable, such can be programmed for extra anticipation - though that need not always work well as the Moon's motion may be well predictable but not all other motion is. Of course some digital-set mathematics will be generally equivalent to a wave mathematics

(The above illustrates only the point made, not any actual scenario, and any actual quantal orbits might be more ellipsoid polygonal.)

A basic signal theory view of Newton 2-body gravitation might reasonably involve a background signal flux and 2 body fluxes something like below.

And though a difference in background gravitation will have do direct force impact on the relative motion of 2 bodies, it could have an indirect impact if it changes the extent of gravity anticipation by the two bodies. But with natural force signals relating to any one force like gravity, multiple sets of signals summate to add or subtract and so they are not 'noise' for eachother. A second signal is 'noise' for some first signal only if it effectively prevents a detector from detecting some of the first signal and does not itself have equivalent effect. And 'noise' in a signal can reduce signal information, but there are exceptional situations when adding more 'noise' to a signal can somewhat perversely preserve more information. This may basically apply where attempts to remove some 'noise' from a signal, removes too much information, see Youtube example.

Einstein's gravity mathematics also looks an improvement on Newton's at distances much larger than solar-system distances, but both lean towards implying a contracting universe while distance light red-shift evidence seems to indicate an expanding universe involving some 'Dark Energy'. However a Natural Signal Information physics can allow a distance red-shift of gravity signals which would reduce their frequency and that cut distance gravity strength which could help cause universe expansion without needing any 'Dark Energy' and so improve on Einstein.

And current gravity theory for Black Holes seems to involve a gravity excess that implies some 'Dark Matter'. However a Natural Signal Information physics can allow near Black Holes a local gravity signal blue-shift which would increase their frequency and that increase local gravity strength without needing any 'Dark Matter' and so improve on current Black Hole theory also. For physics as cause-effect science an Information Physics can be naturally based on signal-response action as attested by magnetism and other physical phenomena, though of course Information for some may seem to have a relation to Observation, Measurement, Probability or maybe to Computation or maybe even to Thinking or Intelligence or indeed to God.

PS. 'Natural Signals' or 'Natural Physical Signals' in a signal physics of gravity, magnetism etc, are basically the 'Indexes' of Charles Sanders Peirce 1939-1914 ( see Peirce.) Though as he noted, in some cases an observer may incorrectly mistake an artificial intentional sign for a natural signal, as from eg the human use of natural signals to carry added intentional information. And a natural signal physics can reconcile the apparent conflicts between classical physics and probability quantum mechanics physics with appropriate noise concerns. This was demonstrated extremely well by Peter Morgan of Yale in a 2021 lecture, which you can see at - Signal Physics. Also he continues his outstanding signal-physics work on 19 Sept 2023 at Iowa University giving a MathPhys seminar with the title 'A Signal Reanalysis of Renormalization' (You can hear it at - Peter Morgan signal physics, or see Twitter/X @PeterMorganQF.)

And there are some further interesting bits of this Natural Signal Information physics theory in other sections of this website, as in our Light section.

Or to hear some other interesting physics on Youtube see - William Gilbert.

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(The fictional time-travel and multi-universe type ideas of modern physics theory have long totally discouraged certain lines of physics experiment despite there being strong reasons to believe them to be very promising if not essential lines of experiment. Some such lines of experiment considered here identified as early as the 1960s seem still to have had no work done on them and there is maybe not much more time here for this. Science funding both government and private unfortunately now all goes to basically safe standard mainstream science, and no money at all goes to any really innovative risky science though that might pay a thousand times greater.)

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