From: jyablon@nycap.rr.com   
      
   On Sunday, May 6, 2018 at 3:36:17 PM UTC-4, Steven Carlip wrote:   
   > On 5/4/18 11:54 PM, Jay R. Yablon wrote:   
   >   
   >> To get right to the point: might it be that Hawking radiation is the   
   >> fundamental physical phenomenon, and that when we observe blackbody   
   >> spectrum in hot experiments or cosmic observations we are simply   
   >> observing derivative manifestations of the fundamental Hawking   
   >> phenomenon? In which case the answer to whether Hawking radiation is   
   >> realistic or has ever been observed would be: yes it is realistic, and   
   >> it is observed all the time.   
   >   
   > First of all, the sum of two black body spectra is not itself black   
   > body unless the temperatures are exactly equal.  So you'd need this   
   > fundamental Hawking radiation to come from black holes that all   
   > have exactly the same mass and spin.   
   ...   
   > In any case, though, your model would seem to depend on the Earth being   
   > at the center of the Universe, surrounded by concentric shells of black   
   > holes with masses and spin that were identical in each shell and   
   > carefully tuned to vary from shell to shell so the radiation reaching us   
   > all arrived with exactly the same spectrum.   
   >   
   > This seems unlikely.   
   >   
   > Steve Carlip   
      
   Let us set aside the CMB for the moment and focus simply on blackbody   
   radiation.  Planck 1901 teaches that a perfectly-non-reflective material   
   body will emit a radiation spectrum which is a function only of the   
   temperature of that body and is independent of the material itself.   
   Temperature itself, since the time of Boltzmann, has been understood as   
   a measure of the *average motion* of huge numbers of molecules which   
   individually possess motions over a statistical spectrum.  The Planck   
   spectral radiance function can be mathematically re-cast as a   
   probability function which tells us, for a given temperature of a   
   blackbody, the statistical likelihood that a given emitted photon will   
   fall within some domain slice of frequency or wavelength.  Putting this   
   all together, the blackbody has a constant temperature which represents   
   the statistical averaging of the motion of its vibrating molecules, and   
   this causes photons to be emitted along a spectrum of values which   
   depend only upon this temperature.  Finally, Hawking teaches that black   
   holes, as near-perfect absorbers of radiation, are also near-perfect   
   blackbodies.   
      
   Now let’s turn back to Wheeler who teaches that at the Planck scale,   
   there are inordinate numbers of positive energy fluctuations which *on   
   average* have the Planck energy, separated from one another *on average*   
   by the Planck length, and therefore naturally giving rise to negative   
   gravitational energies between the fluctuations which precisely   
   counterbalance the positive energies, netting out *on average* to a zero   
   energy once we observe these fluctuations “screened” from at least a few   
   orders of magnitude removed.  This is the geometrodynamic vacuum.  Then,   
   a slight imbalance toward positive energy (Wheeler talked about this   
   arising from field flux lines trapped in the fluctuations, and this was   
   before we had electroweak and strong interaction QCD theory) yields our   
   positive-energy universe.  Each Planck-energy, Planck-length fluctuation   
   has a Schwarzschild horizon that is twice the Plank length, and because   
   each fluctuation is separated from its nearest neighbor “on average” by   
   this same Planck length, virtually *all* of these individual   
   fluctuations are miniature black holes.  However, these fluctuations   
   will all be hidden behind the event horizon and thus not distinguishable   
   from one another by any observer outside the horizon.  Thus, an observer   
   with a galactic-scale “microscope” that can resolve lengths deeply   
   smaller than the nuclear scale and close to the Planck scale would   
   merely see an event horizon anywhere and everywhere he or she looks.   
      
   Importantly, if there is any spin amidst all this fluctuating   
   Planck-scale turbulence which spin has to be expected, then this   
   everywhere-you-look event horizon would also emit Hawking radiation.   
   Moreover, at any given epoch in the evolution of the universe, the   
   fluctuations at one space location would have the exact same character   
   as those at any other nearby space location being observed in the same   
   way under similar external conditions.  So, it is perfectly fair to   
   believe that the temperature observed for the vacuum fluctuations, which   
   again is a statistical measurement, would be the same from one locale to   
   the next nearby locale at the same universe epoch.  Thus, the observer   
   with the galactic-scale microscope would observe the blackbody spectrum   
   which is emitted from, and inherently part of, the quantum vacuum.   
      
   Of course, we do not have galactic-scale microscopes.  So, when we   
   observe the vacuum, we are observing it from 20 or more orders of   
   magnitude removed.  What we do have are accelerators which can give us   
   TeV energies and the spatial resolutions corresponding to those   
   energies.  Likewise, we have telescopes which look far away and back in   
   time which at least qualitatively corresponds to looking at very   
   small-scale phenomena.  (*Stop for query, never thought about this   
   before: is there any analog is encountered in particle physics to the   
   cosmological redshift, as one probes deeper and deeper to smaller and   
   smaller distances, which is analogous to the cosmological redshift of   
   looking far away and far back in time?*) And also, we have ways to make   
   objects hotter.  So, because any temperature is convertible via   
   Boltzmann’s constant to an energy number, we should think about heating   
   an object as yet another way of increasing the observational energy   
   hence spatial resolution, and thus observing the Planck vacuum   
   Schwarzschild horizon a little bit more closely.   
      
   One more thought before we tie this all together: We can talk about a   
   vacuum, and we can talk about material bodies in the vacuum.  But if the   
   vacuum we are talking about is the Planck vacuum, then, say, 1 Kg mass   
   the size of a baseball is still merely a very tiny perturbation of that   
   vacuum.  If we could scale ourselves down to the Planck length, the   
   atoms and even nuclei would seem galactic in size and would contain   
   mostly empty space.  More colloquially, it is often said that all matter   
   is in reality mostly empty space, i.e., matter is merely an extremely   
   tiny perturbation of the Planck vacuum toward positive rest energy.   
      
   So, with all of this in mind, let’s set up a gedanken.  First, let’s   
   travel in a rocket to interstellar space, or at least to somewhere in   
   our own solar system that is shielded from solar temperatures.  For   
   example, hide from the sun behind Mars.  Let’s bring a thermometer and a   
   spectrometer and measure our local environment.  What will we find?  A   
   temperature not far from the 2.726 K which is the CMRB temperature and a   
   radiation spectrum which is the Planck spectrum for that same   
   temperature.  (see, e.g.,   
      
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