Superluminal Research Articles

Faster-than-light solitons in [formula omitted] dimensions

The existence of a faster-than-light particle is in direct opposition to Einstein’s relativity and the principle of causality. However, we show that the theory of classical relativistic fields is not inherently inconsistent with the existence of the faster-than-light particle-like soliton solutions in 1+1 dimensions. We introduce two extended KG models (k-fields) that lead to a zero-energy and a nonzero-energy stable particle-like solution with faster-than light speeds, respectively.

New approach in solving derivative causality problems in the bond-graph method

From the bond-graph model of a dynamic system, the state equations can be obtained. When the system contains only energy storing elements in integral causality, the system of state equations is immediately and directly determined. When the model contains at least one energy storing element in derivative causality, the resulted system of differential-algebraic equations arises some difficulties in finding the final form of the system of state equations. The work presents a new method of deducing the state equations in case of bond-graph models with one, or several energy storing elements in derivative causality. This method is based on the kinetic energy of the system and offers the possibility to avoid a difficult mathematical calculus for the transition from a system of differential algebraic equations to the system of state equations.

Unique Problems Require Unique Solutions—Models and Problems of Linking School Effectiveness and School Improvement

The article aims to outline the proposals for linking school effectiveness research and school improvement that are currently relevant in international discussion and to ask how they deal with the ‘technology deficit’ at the level of model improvement. We will first show the difference between school improvement and school effectiveness. Then, we outline areas showing basic problems associated with linking school effectiveness and school improvement. After that, we present a summary of two relevant models for linking school effectiveness research and school improvement—Comprehensive Framework of Effective School Improvement and Dynamic Model of Educational Effectiveness—and subject them to critical analysis. The result of the critical analysis is that the question arises whether a link between the two traditions leads to a complementation of their respective problems of observation rather than to a compensation of them. This, in particular, concerns the problem of causality, which gives rise to theoretical and methodological considerations in both fields of research.

Analytical Methods for Causality Evaluation of Photonic Materials.

We comprehensively review several general methods and analytical tools used for causality evaluation of photonic materials. Our objective is to call to mind and then formulate, on a mathematically rigorous basis, a set of theorems which can answer the question whether a considered material model is causal or not. For this purpose, a set of various distributional theorems presented in literature is collected as the distributional version of the Titchmarsh theorem, allowing for evaluation of causality in complicated electromagnetic systems. Furthermore, we correct the existing material models with the use of distribution theory in order to obtain their causal formulations. In addition to the well-known Kramers–Krönig (K–K) relations, we overview four further methods which can be used to assess causality of given dispersion relations, when calculations of integrals involved in the K–K relations are challenging or even impossible. Depending on the given problem, optimal approaches allowing us to prove either the causality or lack thereof are pointed out. These methodologies should be useful for scientists and engineers analyzing causality problems in electrodynamics and optics, particularly with regard to photonic materials, when the involved mathematical distributions have to be invoked.

The Constraints Hypothesis: Rethinking Causality in Deradicalisation, Disengagement and Reintegration Pathways. A Complex Systems Perspective

This paper re-frames the concept of causality in deradicalisation, disengagement and reintegration pathways. Analysis of the theories and frameworks in counter-terrorism research indicate that prevalent causal models offer reductive explanations of human behavior, revealing the absence of a scientifically credible account of how agents undergo transformation in pathways out of terrorism. To address the problem of causality, I borrow from the thought bank of complexity theory and reconceptualise causality as the operation of “constraints.” The paper then goes on to operationalize the concept of constraints for counter-terrorism researchers and practitioners, laying down a new and preliminary conceptual framework for thinking about how people leave terrorism behind.

Does the Prevalence of Obesity Affect the Demand for Soft Drinks? Evidence from Cross-Country Panel Data

The impact of soft drinks on obesity has been widely investigated during the last decades. Conversely, the role of obesity as a factor influencing the demand for soft drinks remains largely unexplored. However, understanding potential changes in the demand for soft drinks, as a result of changes in the spread of obesity, may be useful to better design a comprehensive strategy to curb soft drink consumption. In this paper, we aim to answer the following research question: Does the prevalence of obesity affect the demand for soft drinks? For this purpose, we collected data in a sample of 97 countries worldwide for the period 2005–2019. To deal with problems of reverse causality, an instrumental variable approach and a two-stage least squares method were used to estimate the impact of the age-standardized obesity rate on the market demand for soft drinks. After controlling for several demographic and socio-economic confounding factors, we found that a one percent increase in the prevalence of obesity increases the consumption of soft drinks and carbonated soft drinks by about 2.37 and 1.11 L per person/year, respectively. Our findings corroborate the idea that the development of an obesogenic food environment is a self-sustaining process, in which obesity and unhealthy lifestyles reinforce each other, and further support the need for an integrated approach to curb soft drink consumption by combining sugar taxes with bans, regulations, and nutrition education programs.

Moral Obligation to Worship God Alone

This article examines how, in his al-Tafsīr al-kabīr, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210) addresses the problem of the obligation to thank the benefactor (wujūb shukr al-munʿim) within the context of the Quranic command to worship God alone. The obligation to thank one’s benefactor was a contentious problem among classical Islamic thinkers before Rāzī, and it was frequently discussed in fiqh and kalām works in the context of the ontology and epistemology of moral values and legal norms. Rāzī’s analysis in the Tafsīr, however, sheds light on another way in which the “thanking one’s benefactor”-problem was of relevance for classical Islamic thinkers: it is used to frame the rationale for monotheism in terms of the gratitude God deserves for being humans’ provider. This aspect of the “thanking one’s benefactor”-problem has not been highlighted in the secondary literature. This article discusses how Rāzī’s analysis of God’s sole deservedness of worship has theological, legal, and ethical/moral implications. The theological implications are found in the questions it raises about the notorious problem of causality. The legal implications become apparent in Rāzī’s interest in the ratio legis of the Quranic command and in establishing that the obligation arises with God’s sovereign decree. The ethical or moral implications, finally, are seen in his concern with how humans come to know of the goodness of monotheism and the repugnancy of polytheism. The article contextualises Rāzī’s position in the Tafsīr against the background of the fiqh and kalām debates about the “thanking one’s benefactor”-problem.

A Non-Newtonian View of the Universe Derived from Hydrodynamic Gravitation and Expanding Earth

Earth Science observations and the Borexino and KamLAND geoneutrino experiments provide clues on the role of aether in the evolution of the Earth, planets, and all other universal structures. Analysis of the problem of storage of aether entering celestial bodies led to a hydrodynamic explanation of gravitation which in turn was found to be closely related to the expanding Earth and to several other phenomena. Variable radius paleogeography provides an approximate assessment of the quantity of ordinary matter added to the planet per time unit, and some inferences about the Earth’s inner energy balance. The aether density, flow rate, and velocity are computed with the help of astrophysics. The origins of cosmological and gravitational redshift are unified under the single cause of gravitation. This is linked to the similar but not interchangeable concept of tired light, which was considered very plausible by cosmologists like Edwin Hubble and Fritz Zwicky. A superluminal speed was calculated for aether at the Earth’s surface. INFN experiments confirm hydrodynamic gravitation and superluminal velocities, and it is possible to identify interrelations of aether parameters with the currently known cosmological parameters H0, G, and c. Unification of hydrodynamic gravitation and the expansion of the celestial bodies through the existence of a minor dissipative force, a non-Newtonian concept, involves a revision of the theories of physics and cosmology, in which the currently accepted laws of physics will be only considered good approximations of a more complex reality.

The Crisis of Mental Causality Problem Development

The Crisis of Mental Causality Problem Development

Impact of foreign ownership on firm productivity: evidence from Japanese manufacturing firms

This article presents the methodology to examine the impact of foreign ownership on firm productivity using firm-level data of Japanese manufacturing firms from 2000 to 2016, which include 1,458 listed companies in Japan. Firm productivity is represented by total factor productivity (TFP), which is estimated by the Olley–Pakes semiparametric estimation method to minimize the simultaneity problem in production function estimation. In the estimation of the impact of foreign ownership on firm productivity, system GMM estimation is applied to address a possible reversal causality problem between foreign ownership and firm productivity. Based on the case of the manufacturing firms in Japan, this article shows that 1 percentage point increase in foreign ownership increases the firm productivity by 0.06 percent. The evidence of this article supports the positive impact of foreign ownership on firm productivity and further implies that the promotion of foreign investment could be a policy option to improve firm productivity. Highlights This study analyzes the impact of foreign ownership on firm productivity. Firm-level data of the Japanese manufacturing firms from 2000 to 2016 are analyzed. The result supports the positive impact of foreign ownership on firm productivity.

Variability of the Blazar 1156+295 in 2005–2020

We present and analyze the monitoring results of the blazar 1156+295 in radio, optical, and gamma ranges in 2005–2020. After a long period of relative quietness at the end of 2017, a sharp increase in activity occurred in all spectral ranges, from radio to gamma. The connection between events that took place in different ranges has been studied. Photometric variability in the optical-infrared region is explained by the presence of a variable component with a constant on average power-law relative energy distribution in the spectrum (Fν ~ ν–1.4). Separate sources of polarized radiation with a relatively high degree of polarization are identified. The synchrotron nature of the components responsible for the activity is beyond doubt. During VLBI observations, four components moving at superluminal speeds were found; a connection has been established between the instants of their appearance and events in all spectral ranges. It is noted that the difference in the values of the spectral indices for different time intervals does not allow to explain the variability of the flux by geometric factors only (by the change in the Doppler factor due to the change in the angle between the line of sight and the subluminal motion direction of the emitting ensemble of electrons). For different time intervals, the energy distributions of electrons in ensembles should be different.

The relativistic parsec-scale jets of the blazars TXS 0506+056 and PKS 0502+049 and their possible association with gamma-ray flares and neutrino production

ABSTRACT The physical nature of the mechanism responsible for the emission of neutrinos in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) has been matter of debate in the literature, with relativistic jets of radio-loud AGNs as possible candidates to be the sources of high-energy neutrinos. The most prominent candidate so far is the blazar TXS 0506+056, which is found to be associated with the neutrino event IceCube-170922A. Furthermore, the IceCube reported an excess of neutrinos towards TXS 0506+056 between September 2014 and March 2015, even though this association needs additional investigation, considering the presence of a nearby gamma-ray source, the quasar PKS 0502+049. Motivated by this, we studied the parsec-scale structures of TXS 0506+056 and PKS 0502+049 through radio interferometry at 8 and 15 GHz. We identified twelve jet components in TXS 0506+056 and seven components in PKS 0502+049. The most reliable jet components show superluminal speeds ranging from 9.5c to 66c in the case of TXS 0506+056, and from 14.3c to 59c for PKS 0502+049, which were used to estimate a lower (upper) limit for the Lorentz factor (jet viewing angle) for both sources. A novel approach using simultaneously the brightness temperature of the core region and the apparent speeds of the jet components allowed us to infer basic jet parameters for TXS 0506+056 at distinct epochs. We also found that the emergence of new jet components coincides with the occurrence of gamma-ray flares. Interestingly, two of these coincidences in the case of PKS 0502+049 and one for TXS 0506+056 seems to be correlated with neutrino events detected by the IceCube Observatory.

Well Fed, Well Bred? Economic Development and Civil Honesty

Civil honesty, defined by telling the truth or reporting private information, is essential to many economic activities（Abeler, et al., 2019; Arrow, 1974）. As to the determinants of civil honesty, for decades, economists assume that truth-telling decisions only depend on material benefit. However, several recent researches across economics, sociology, and psychology depart from this assumption, and posit that honesty’s formation is affected by the social environment（Kosse, et al., 2020）. Just as Guanzi put forward: “Well fed, well bred.” The words are quoted and approved widely by Confucius and Sima Qian, and are consistent with Karl Marx’s arguments in his famous preface to “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”.In this paper, we aim to tackle these difficulties and deepen our understanding of how social environment or macroscopic factors affect individual truth-telling behavior. Our empirical strategy is threefold: Firstly, we develop four measures of the “（dis）honesty” based on behavior data from cross-societal anonymous die-rolling experiments conducted in 23 countries（Gachter and Schulz, 2016）. Then, we use the average per capita GDP from 1990 to 2000 to measure the economic development（Gachter and Schulz, 2016）, use the average executive constraints from 1990 to 2000 to measure the institutional quality, and use the individualism index given by Hofstede（2001）to represent the cultural factors. Due to the fact that experiment participants were young in 1990s and could not affect macroscopic factors, the reverse causality problem is avoided. Finally, we use several history, language, gene or geography based instruments to reduce the potential omitted variable bias.Estimation results show that prosperity in 1990s has significant positive causality effects on current individual intrinsic honesty, which is consistent with the hypothesis we propose in our conceptual framework. And the effects of institution and culture are not significant, which is quite surprising and challenges the findings and views of some existing literature（Birkelund and Cherry, 2020; Gachter and Schulz, 2016）. These results are robust with different models, different estimation methods, and more control variables. Besides, we propose and test some mechanisms through which economic development affects individual intrinsic honesty, such as individual norms of honesty, individual beliefs in fairness in others, social trust and respect（Tabellini, 2008）, shadow economy, prevalence of rule violations, and income inequality.Our results verify the hypothesis of Guanzi and Karl Marx and have important policy implications. Firstly, the policy that boosts the economy is also essential for promoting civil moral. Secondly, policy interventions that rely on voluntary compliance could be very successful, because the evidence suggests that lying is psychologically costly. Finally, we emphasize policy interventions should consider specific societal environment.

Perfect fluid warp drive solutions with the cosmological constant

The Alcubierre metric describes a spacetime geometry that allows a massive particle inside a spacetime distortion, called warp bubble, to travel with superluminal global velocities. In this work, we advance solutions of the Einstein equations with the cosmological constant for the Alcubierre warp drive metric having the perfect fluid as source. We also consider the particular dust case with the cosmological constant, which generalizes our previous dust solution (Santos-Pereira et al. 2020) and led to vacuum solutions connecting the warp drive with shock waves via the Burgers equation, as well as our perfect fluid solution without the cosmological constant (Santos-Pereira et al. 2021). All energy conditions are also analyzed. The results show that the shift vector in the direction of the warp bubble motion creates a coupling in the Einstein equations that requires off-diagonal terms in the energy–momentum source. Therefore, it seems that to achieve superluminal speeds by means of the Alcubierre warp drive spacetime geometry one may require a complex configuration and distribution of energy, matter and momentum as source in order to produce a warp drive bubble. In addition, warp speeds seem to require more complex forms of matter than dust for stable solutions and that negative matter may not be a strict requirement to achieve global superluminal speeds.

Zipoy-Voorhees Gravitational Object as a Source of High-Energy Relativistic Particles

The Zipoy-Voorhees solution is known as the γ-metric and/or q-metric being static and axisymmetric vacuum solution of Einstein field equations which becomes strong curvature naked singularity. The metric is characterized by two parameters, namely, the mass M and the dimensionless deformation parameter γ. It is shown that the velocity of test particle orbiting around the central γ-object can reach the speed of light, consequently, the total energy of the particle will be very high for a specific value the deformation parameter of the spacetime. It is also shown that causality problem arises in the interior region of the physical singularity for the specific value of the deformation parameter when test particles can move with superluminal velocity being greater than the speed of light that might be an additional tool for explaining the existence of tachyons for γ>1/2 which are invisible for an observer.

Infrared dust echoes from neutron star mergers

ABSTRACT A significant fraction of binary neutron star mergers occur in star-forming galaxies where the UV-optical and soft X-ray emission from the relativistic jet may be absorbed by dust and re-emitted at longer wavelengths. We show that, for mergers occurring in gas-rich environment ($n_{\rm H}\gtrsim 0.5\rm \, cm^{-3}$ at a few to tens of pc) and when the viewing angle is less than about 30°, the emission from heated dust should be detectable by James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), with a detection rate of $\sim 1\rm \, yr^{-1}$. The spatial separation between the dust emission and the merger site is a few to 10 milli-arcsecs (for a source distance of 150 Mpc), which may be astrometrically resolved by JWST for sufficiently high signal-noise-ratio detections. Measuring the superluminal apparent speed of the flux centroid directly gives the orbital inclination of the merger, which can be combined with gravitational wave data to measure the Hubble constant. For a line of sight within the jet opening angle, the dust echoes are much brighter and may contaminate the search for kilonova candidates from short gamma-ray bursts, such as the case of GRB 130603B.

Quantum field theory of space-like neutrino

We performed a Lorentz covariant quantization of the spin-1/2 fermion field assuming the space-like energy-momentum dispersion relation. We achieved the task in the following steps: (i) determining the unitary realizations of the inhomogenous Lorentz group in the preferred frame scenario by means of the Wigner–Mackey induction procedure and constructing the Fock space; (ii) formulating the theory in a manifestly covariant way by constructing the field amplitudes according to the Weinberg method; (iii) obtaining the final constraints on the amplitudes by postulating a Dirac-like free field equation. Our theory allows to predict all chiral properties of the neutrinos, preserving the Standard Model dynamics. We discussed the form of the fundamental observables, energy and helicity, and show that non-observation of the +tfrac{1}{2} helicity state of the neutrino and the -tfrac{1}{2} helicity state of the antineutrino could be a direct consequence of the “tachyoneity” of neutrinos at the free level. We found that the free field theory of the space-like neutrino is not invariant under the C and P transformations separately but is CP-invariant. We calculated and analyzed the electron energy spectrum in tritium decay within the framework of our theory and found an excellent agreement with the recent measurement of KATRIN. In our formalism the questions of negative/imaginary energies and the causality problem does not appear.

The effect of income inequality on human capital inequality: Evidence from China

This paper studies the effect of income inequality on human capital inequality empirically across 31 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions of China during 1996-2018. Using a series of econometric approaches, including the two-way fixed-effect IV panel regression, we find that: (i) growing income inequality is associated with an expansion in human capital inequality, given all other things being equal, and (ii) increasing the growth rate of initial income, as an essential family resource to finance access to schooling, tends to weaken the positive effect of income inequality on human capital inequality. Our results are consistent with the existing theory, showing that impoverished households who have less family resources are more likely to be restrained from accessing better education opportunities under credit market imperfections. Moreover, our results are robust to alternative modeling specifications and estimation methods, including instrumental variables that address the problem of reverse causality arising from human capital inequality.

Epidemiological research in industrial medicine: the healthy / unhealthy worker effect and problems of causality

The author investigates issues related to the professional ability of a person, analyzes the current state of terminology, including the terms "healthy worker effect", "healthy migrant effect", concludes that it is necessary to unify the scientific and medical terminology used in scientific research into the "healthy worker effect.

Could fast battery charging effectively mitigate range anxiety in electric vehicle usage?Evidence from large-scale data on travel and charging in Beijing

Range anxiety is a psychological condition in which people worry that the limited battery capacity of electric vehicles (EV) will result in running out of power before reaching their destination. In this paper, with the application of quantile regression, 1.7 million charging and driving records for EVs in Beijing are used to explore how fast charging impacts on range anxiety. As state of charge (SOC) is highly related to range anxiety, this paper mainly focuses on the relationship between the charging rate and the SOC, which can be further extended to range anxiety. The results show that the charging rate is negatively related to the SOC, which indicates that fast charging could improve the charging rate and then reduce both the SOC and range anxiety. Temperature positively moderates the effects of the charging rate on range anxiety, which indicates that fast charging would be more effective in reducing range anxiety when it is a cold weather. Additionally, the quantity of charging piles negatively moderates the relationship between the charging rate and range anxiety. However, range anxiety may also influence the choice of charging rate, which might bring a reverse causality problem between the charging rate and the SOC, and result in an exaggerated significance of our analysis. After discussing the endogeneity of our regression results, we believe the possible bias is still totally acceptable.