Aether Tectonics Exploration of a new way of looking at space and matter and light by Ross Tessien
Could a Fish Weigh a Rock in Liquid Helium?
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia in the Southern Autumn of 1996

Date: Thu, 14 Mar 96 08:40:03 -0800
From: tessien@oro.net (Ross Tessien)
To: sci.physics
Item: news:4hvodo$rig@hg.oro.net
Subject: Could a Fish Weigh a Rock in Liquid Helium?

Suppose you were a fish living in super fluid liquid helium. (*I guess the first thing to acknowledge that this would be a fish of very rigid moral standards so to speak. Please ignore the consequences of Mr. Fish jumping out of the tank and shattering on the floor!)

This liquid exhibits no viscous friction, so if you move a rock through it you will not have any friction. (Note; if there are some second order effects please let me know, but ignore them for this post. Consider that the fish is weighing an electron in a superconductor if this will help. The point is the fish is submerged in a fluid which affects the weight of the rock due to buoyant support but offers no friction to know the liquid is even there.)

Could the fish devise an experiment to determine that it lived in a fluid?

I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts as to whether or not a fish could accurately determine the mass of a rock or if it would come up with a lesser value due to the buoyancy of the liquid. This of course assumes frictionless flow and I also assume that while there is no resistance to flow, that there is inertia involved and so the liquid helium will require energy to accelerate the flow pattern as the rock accelerates. I haven't studied liquid helium so let me know if this assumption is not correct.

As best I can figure off the top of my head, the rock will weigh less than we would obtain in air, but since the fish would never know that an air environment existed, it could not find this out. So, it seems as though either the mass would be considered less or the gravitational field would be considered to be less.

It could accelerate the rock and note the resistance to change in velocity, I think this would be the sum of the acceleration of the rock itself, and the acceleration of the liquid helium flow pattern which too would require energy. The fish could measure the difference between accelerating the rock in the vertical up/down, and horizontal directions. In doing so, the fish would come to believe that the mass of the rock was greater than what we consider the mass to be. However, as the rock approached the sound speed of the liquid helium, the apparent mass of the rock would seem to increase toward a large value as the fish was pushing more and more liquid helium out of the way to create a flow pattern that reached far enough ahead to force the slipping of the liquid through itself.

Once accelerated, the fish would have to apply energy in the reverse direction to slow the rock back down due to its momentum.

Ross Tessien
There exist in nature, no attractive forces.

Index Document - Theories of Aether

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	Aether Tectonics Exploration of a new way of looking at space and matter and light by Ross Tessien
Could a Fish Weigh a Rock in Liquid Helium?
Web Publication by Mountain Man Graphics, Australia in the Southern Autumn of 1996